


i like me better when i'm with you

by nettlewine



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Closeted Character, DAD BOB, Detroit Red Wings, Endgame Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Epikegster (Check Please!), Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Families of Choice, Found Family, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Getting Back Together, Hockey, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, Junior Hockey, Kent "Parse" Parson Character Study, Kent "Parse" Parson Positive, Kent Parson Needs a Hug, Las Vegas Aces, M/M, Making Out, Making Up, Montreal Canadiens, NHL Player Jack Zimmermann, NHL Trade(s), Pining, Providence Falconers (Check Please!), Providence Falconers Player Jack Zimmermann, Recovery, Rimouski Océanic, Sad Kent "Parse" Parson, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bob zimmermann has a hockey podcast, kent parson is an alcoholic, surrogate dad bob zimmermann, surrogate mom alicia zimmermann, they're not exactly enemies...but they're definitely not friends yet, unreliable narrator kent parson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 77,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nettlewine/pseuds/nettlewine
Summary: after years of mourning the life he wanted, kent is starting to grow into the life he has — just as jack starts to outgrow the walls he has built around himself.
Relationships: Camilla Collins/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson & Connor "Whiskey" Whisk, Kent "Parse" Parson/Connor "Whiskey" Whisk, Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 334
Kudos: 101





	1. A1: nightmares

Often, Kent wakes up in the night, unable to breathe. Sweat settles on his scalp, clammy and hot; it trickles down his neck and makes his t-shirt stick to his back. Sometimes, on nights like this, he rushes to the window and shoves it open, letting the chilly desert air rush in. Sometimes, he throws up in the sink. 

Every time, he sees Jack’s face, pale as the moon, cold as porcelain. He remembers standing on the threshold of the Zimmermanns’ upstairs bathroom, adrenaline thrumming behind his ears, taking in the contrast of Jack’s dark hair against the pale tile, the white pills scattered across the black countertop, the plastic lid on the floor. _Black, white. White, black, white._

_Black._

In the space of a split second, Kent’s brain had caught up with the scene in front of him. He could’ve passed out right next to Jack in that moment, like two lovers buried side by side. Kent doesn’t exactly remember how he sprung into action, how he forfeited his grip on the doorframe in favor of pressing a shaking hand to Jack’s cool skin, checking him, grounding himself. He does remember screaming, though - screaming for Alicia, cursing the size of the house, the way that the echoes made _help_ seem farther away than he needed it to be.

In his nightmares, the word that he cries out, desperate and childlike, is always _Mom_.

That’s when he always wakes up.

Tonight, it’s worse than normal. The fresh air at the window hadn’t been anywhere near enough to slow the spinning in his head, to drag him back out of that dissociative tunnel vision that engulfs him whenever he’s nauseated. Instead, he’s curling over the sink, resting his forehead on the cold metal faucet. He’s slowly settling back down into his body; when he’s sick, it’s like he’s looking down at himself from above. His consciousness flies five feet above the room he’s in, enough that he can’t feel anything, enough that the rushing in his ears is the only thing that he can latch onto. As his thoughts come flooding back, Kent can only wish that they were gone from him again.

There’s one that’s persistent, though, one that always comes up in panicky, sick, awful moments like this:

_Does Jack do this, too?_

Or is Kent the only one sweating through his clothes, scrubbing acid off of his tongue, wandering a too-empty house in the early morning, before the orange desert sunrise has a chance to warm his cat’s favorite spot on the terracotta floor?

In his worst moments, he wishes he could go back to the immediate aftermath of it all. He could have just stuck to his guns, thrown a screaming tantrum, refused to leave the hospital, forfeited his spot in the draft - given up everything he’d worked for, everything _they’d_ worked for, in favor of pulling up a chair by Jack’s hospital bed and waiting for him to wake up.

In this alternate scenario, when Jack wakes up to Kent keeping watch beneath the beeping monitors, Jack would realize that Kent’s devotion to him wasn’t actually a direct result of the number of chicken strips Jack shared with him, or the fact that, initially, Kent didn’t know anybody else in Quebec well enough to get attached to them in the same crazy, codependent way. It would prove to Jack that Kent felt something _real_ , that it wasn’t just some fleeting teenage crush. He knows that was never a real option, but rationality had never been something that Kent had tried to lean into.

On second thought, those aren’t his worst moments.

Giving up his life of relative luxury is a choice that he _could_ make, but has never seriously entertained. His coaches would kill him; his GM would kill him; his agent would kill him, dig him up, and then kill him again. His past self, the kid that sold hockey cards on the playground to pay for gear, would have toiled for nothing. But choices, even awful ones, are still choices. The true “worst moments” come whenever Kent is reminded that his life is apparently dictated by traumatic events outside his control. He’s hit rock bottom a few times since signing his Vegas contract, and Kent feels like he’s probably got a few more rocks in his pocket, so to speak.

In the end, Kent had made his way to the draft. He’d slept in a hotel by himself, courtesy of Bob Zimmermann’s credit card. He’d woken up, showered, smoothed his hair back with his signature styling clay. He’d done up his own tie for the first time, painfully missing the careful, affectionate way that Jack’s knuckles used to brush his chin, his jaw, his Adam’s apple, as his fingers executed a half-Windsor at Kent’s throat. 

He’d gone first overall, in Jack’s place. He’d taken the plane ticket to Vegas that should have been Jack’s. It went on and on like this for days, weeks, months - years, really, if Kent’s honest with himself. He’s looking in the mirror right now, pale and flushed at the same time, and he knows it’s still like that.

As Kent cleans himself up, he grimaces at the damage. One of these days, he’s going to be too worn out after this whole ritual to wipe the sink down, and then his housekeeper is going to start worrying. He can’t stand himself in these moments; he put all his energy into chasing this future, the NHL, stability - and he made it - but now that he’s here, he can’t cope. It’s not the fame that traps his mind in an endless loop of self-destructive impulses; Kent’s a gregarious person, and the boundaries he’s built up for his own privacy are more or less working for him.

The problem is, of course, that he’s doing it alone.

He had never expected that he and Jack would be in the same place, of course; Jack was supposed to be here, in a house just like this one, some desert mansion, and Kent was supposed to be on Long Island. But they should have been able to _talk_ , to share similar stories, to commiserate, to send trick shot videos back and forth. And, eventually, they would have made their way back to each other’s line, ideally in Montreal: for Jack, it was his hometown, his legacy; for Kent, it was the only place that had ever felt like home.

What’s the point in having any of this _life after Jack_ , these expensive dinners and fancy cocktails, if it’s all just going to come up as bile in the back of his throat anyway, stinging and choking him as he starts to cry, splattering all over his custom-built sink and pricey toiletries?

It’s only ever times like these that he remembers he’s been meaning to buy a new toothbrush.

\--

Months later, Kent makes some changes. In the spirit of coping, and especially of quieting his horrible nightmares, he drags his blankets and pillows down the stairs and dumps them on his living room couch. When he was a kid, he always fell asleep to the sound of the television: late-night game shows, Nick at Nite, anime re-runs - he wasn’t picky. He figures, now, that it’s time to start camping out, to see if old tricks still apply. He imagines that it’s a bad idea to pair any attempts at getting better with a dramatic uptick in his personal record of number-of-beers-consumed-per-day, but it is what it is. If it helps him sleep, it’s worth trying. He gets a Crunchyroll subscription; he puts a few candles around the house.

He buys a new toothbrush.

In a few days, sleep starts coming a little easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in retrospect i think this fic probably starts off kind of slow, but after the first few chapters, things start to pick up lmao. i've divided it into arcs (see: chapter titles with A/B/C/D/etc.) in hopes that it would help me organize the plot into sections, and this part we're in right now is just "background" - contextualization, etc.


	2. A2: past and present

Kent sleeps in the living room now. It's the sort of thing that he doesn't personally flag as embarrassing, exactly, but he knows better than to tell people about it.

Every time he comes home from the rink, he unpacks one of the dinners from some meal-prep company that his nutritionist recommended, grabs a beer or three, and settles into his nest on the couch to watch anime while he eats.

He revisits _Bleach_ first. It's not as good as he remembers. But, then again, what is?

On day three, he starts to think that he might be getting better.

\--

On day five, the Aces lose at home.

Kent gets drunk in Paradise and wakes up in his backyard.

\--

The next day, at captain-led practice, Kent runs the team harder than he has in months. In retrospect, if he'd been running them this hard the whole time, maybe they wouldn't have lost, and Kent wouldn't be running drills with a splitting headache right now. 

"It's fucking embarrassing to lose like that," he shouts over the sound of his [_pump-up skate jamz_](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4qThPG9SAR4K6hiXnb8u6R?si=nJvjDqEVTDSqbc7ewRN54A) playlist, skating backwards in quick C-cuts to stay ahead of the guys rushing up from the blue line. He'd be shouting even if it wasn't loud in here, but the speakers give him enough plausible deniability that, once this all blows over, he can still claim to be an approachable, friendly captain. "One more from the red line, then break off into darks and lights. Losing team skates suicides while the winners go pick up all the game day suits from the dry cleaners--"

"What about you, asshole?" says Carl, red-faced, as he sails past Kent on his way to the red line. "I didn't see you scoring, either."

Kent doesn't take the bait. "I was planning on picking up a catering order from the deli," he says. "You'd eat a turkey wrap, right, Carl?"

"Fuck you," Carl says, but he takes Kent's (shouted) directions anyway. That's a win, sort of.

\--

A few weeks into this new routine, Kent is still an insomniac. But the television works; it’s like a lullaby, a voice in the room where before there were only Kent’s own thoughts, a melancholy promenade through his mind. He’s not sure why he’s still so attached to the idea of sharing space with others at night; it’s been years since he’s cohabited with anyone. He’d shared a room with his sister Katie when they were growing up, but that had been out of necessity rather than preference. And he and Jack had only spent a precious little while bundled up in the same bed, talking quietly - and, sometimes, doing more than talking.

 _That_ isn’t even what he misses most; sure, he is squarely in the unsatisfying realm of celibacy at the moment, but, mostly, Kent just likes hearing other people talk, or move, or breathe. He misses the little things, like Jack’s arm tucking him close in his sleep, or the smell of the cologne that Alicia bought for Jack every Christmas. All of this is proof that his extroversion has, over the course of his life, rooted itself incredibly deeply in his psyche with little regard for his current reality.

At least he still has hockey.

Hockey has always been there for him, and it’s there for him now. A natural-born athlete, he is made anew on the ice; untethered, he can _spread out_ and make space for his thoughts. Sometimes, it helps with his nightmares. Other times, it just gives him something to look forward to when he wakes up from them.

Either way, Kent is thankful that, in every season of his life, he has scraped out a path forward for himself with nothing but the glide of metal on ice. It’s what got him out of Buffalo; it’s what will get him out of this mood he’s in today.

This has always been his escape, ever since he was a child. Back then, he would get himself up and ready for school, dragging his little sister along with him. They didn’t need people looking into truancy violations, so Kent pencil-tapped and desk-drummed his way through the foundational years of his education on the backs of drowsy daydreams. But his unremarkable academic record wasn’t just a factor of his disinterest in worksheets; he was the sort of child who “lacked support at home”, as his teachers had awkwardly masked it.

As the oldest child, Kent had made things work on his own, for the most part. His father, who had sometimes been deployed in faraway places and sometimes had cast a menacing shadow at home, never liked Kent very much. His mother had grown quieter and more withdrawn as she became increasingly dependent on her daily drinks, eventually becoming a rare sighting in their small Buffalo apartment by the time Kent and Katie were teenagers. Kent’s nightmares back then were different, but just as powerful.

But there was hockey. Kent started skating early on; he needed somewhere to be that wasn’t in his father’s way, and growing up in Buffalo meant that hockey was everywhere. Kent was _obsessed_. When he couldn’t bear to go home after school, he’d pull on his oversized NASCAR jacket and stand in the snow, selling hockey cards to kids for what he figured was a reasonable profit. He had a business mindset, even back then; the smartest thing he ever did was turn himself into the product.

When that moment came - when he decided to set his sights on surpassing the professionals on the cards he sold - he took the city bus to the Timothy J. Burvid Ice Rink and got outfitted by a charity group that was in charge of the rink’s hockey program. He spent all his time there, going straight from school, setting his little sister up in the stands with her hat, coat, and mittens. He’d break out onto the ice, speed-skating a dozen laps around the boards, and relish the feeling of release he got from it all. There was something about the way that the cold settled into his bones that made him calm, kept his brain quiet, gave him space to externalize his hurt, his helplessness, his anger, his trauma.

If his ankles hurt, so what? He had an outlet. He could _cope._

_\--_

Now, Kent lives in the manifestation of those hours at the rink, the pain in his calves, the wins after wins after wins. That’s why he’s here; he was the best out of anyone he knew back then. As it turned out, no one else on the parks and rec team cared as much about developing their play style as did the boy who needed it to survive.

As it turns out, Kent still needs it to survive.

He packs his hockey bag for an early morning skate, sets it by the door, and tosses his car keys on top. Kent’s been trying to eat breakfast lately, to carve out some time for a green smoothie or an egg sandwich. His nutritionist is, from Kent’s point of view, a hard woman to please; he’ll work for his personal trainer, but anyone who tries to get between Kent and regular steak dinners is an obstacle that must be challenged. Even if it’s for the sake of hockey.

“Morning, Purrs,” Kent says, as his cat weaves her way through to her food bowl. She gives him a warm glare, a sort of _Good morning,_ in her own resentful little way.

“A hungry little bear has made her way into my kitchen,” he says, and Purrs ignores him. “She’s going straight for the bowl.” 

He likes to narrate for Purrs. He’s always imagined that, once he retires, he’d end up as a hockey analyst on some television sports network, dissecting plays and cracking jokes. 

It’s an honor afforded only to the rarest of players: charismatic ones. That’s what Bob Zimmermann is doing now, some sort of hockey commentary podcast, and it suits him. Sometimes, when Kent just wants to hear the voice of his former surrogate dad, he puts it on in the car. It’s always at a low volume, though, because it’s hard to fill his immediate space with the knowledge that Bob is out there in real time, doing something other than contacting Kent, asking him how he’s doing, inviting him to the house for dinner the next time he plays Montreal. The podcast best serves as a quiet, welcome reminder of the early-morning conversations they used to have over the breakfast table, too loud and spirited for the hour, when the fog and frost settled like a familiar blanket over the idling Range Rover outside.

\--

“How many eggs?” Bob would ask as Jack and Kent made their way downstairs, already grinning and laughing and too-close.

“Three,” they would say, together, and then laugh about it. Because that’s how things were back then.

“Three it is,” Bob would say, his dramatic Quebecois lilt always sounding a little bit like a song.

They had been so obvious back then, coming downstairs smelling of each other, kicking each other’s shins under the table, Kent lounging in Jack’s too-big shirts, Jack _smiling_ like that. They had thought that they were being so coy, so secretive; who would ever guess that, every night, as soon as Bob and Alicia finally went to bed, Kent would slip out of the guest bedroom and find Jack under his own covers?

Bob had always been a big believer in the sanctity of boyhood, and Kent suspects that he had let a few questionable things slide just because he had thought that Kent’s influence might put some hair on Jack’s chest. Bob had probably imagined a little bit of roughhousing and drinking at parties, things that a previously-friendless, awkward Jack had never had access to until Kent had shown up. That had happened, too, but after a while it was mostly a cover for being able to touch each other, to look into each other’s eyes and grin, to share moments in Jack’s car afterwards that, in retrospect, Jack might never have even initiated if he hadn’t been so emboldened.

It had taken a lot to drag Jack out of his shell back then.

He was always so strict with himself, and Kent, seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, had read this as admirable discipline rather than dangerous rigidity. Kent used to muse about how, no matter how lost they were after driving around aimlessly for hours, they’d always find their way back home, to Jack’s room; he’d marvel at the fact that, no matter how drunk he was, Jack would always remember to set his watch alarm.

The ritual of waking at dawn to pile into the Zimmermanns’ winter vehicle and head to the rink had been the stuff of dreams; for a teenage boy with a one-track mind, rising to the occasion - that is, complying with Bob Zimmermann’s idea of an appropriate level of investment in hockey - had been the easiest thing in the world. Jack hadn’t found it as easy, but, then again, Jack had grown up with it. All his life, Kent had ached for some parental figure like Bob, who believed in his potential, who could ease his way, who was eager to cheer him on.

Kent had known he was going to the top no matter what, but a trip to the rink in a luxury car with heated seats had been a hell of a lot better than a solo trudge through the snow back home. 

Bob and Alicia had opened doors for him that Kent hadn’t even known were _there,_ much less closed, and when Kent thinks about it now, he’s bowled over by the ease at which they had accepted him as a second son. When Kent lost Jack, he also lost the only _real_ family he’d ever had, and the way it grips him still is just another testament to Kent’s inability to cope with anything. Maybe it’s his fault for ghosting his therapists, but they just tell him to quit picking at the scab and bury Jack for good, as if Kent could do that when Jack had narrowly escaped that exact fate in no uncertain terms.

It’s disrespectful, the way that these people don’t even try to understand what they had. But how could they know?

Sometimes, Kent’s not even sure that he and Jack were on the same page about it.

\--

In the end, Kent opts for an egg sandwich. He eats it, half-wrapped in a paper towel, as he drives one-handed down the desert highway towards the Aces’ practice rink. It’s not even that hot yet, so Kent rolls the windows down just to feel the wind on his face. He gets up just as early as he used to back in Quebec, and he wonders if, somewhere, Jack still rises at dawn, too, to that same shrill _beep-beepbeep-beep_ from his watch. As he pulls into the parking lot, he tries to remember what kind of watch it was, exactly.

He’s _always_ the first one at the rink. In theory, this is expected; he’s the captain, after all. In practice, though, it’s because Kent gets there hours before the stated start time. He’s _coping;_ a rink all to himself is part of the necessary provisions.

It’s also just _nice._

Even if it wasn’t a memory, it would still be nice.

\--

In the next game, the first of three on the road, the Aces shut out the Wild 3-0.

When Kent curls up on the couch that night, he feels like he can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to Hasek’s Heroes for doing great work in Buffalo, NY to increase kids' access to hockey
> 
> also, the "kent parson's pump-up skate jamz" playlist is one I made a few years ago - it's pop diva songs that kp would play during practice if they let him plug his phone into the rink's audio system


	3. A3: routines

“Thanks for the workout, Parse.”

Kent nods at Troy as they wipe down the machines. “You got lunch plans?”

“Going out to some Mexican place with Hailey and her family,” Troy says. “It’s her brother’s birthday.”

“Oh, dope,” Kent says, zipping his bag shut. They make their way to the statue out front; it's a vaguely-creepy bronze version of their mascot, a Gila monster named Chance. Kent sees Troy’s girlfriend’s car parked a few yards away, some sleek little blue coupe. Troy throws up a hand in greeting. 

“See you, Swoops.”

“Later, bro.”

Kent watches him jog to the car, get in, give Hailey a quick kiss. It’s demonstrative of that casual, established comfort that Kent himself longs for. He thought he had it, once, but did he really? Jack had never kissed him like that, easy, light, in greeting. He couldn’t, not in an ice rink parking lot like this. Kent knows that - he knew it then, too - but that’s a different kind of hurt altogether.

He stands on the curb for a long moment before he realizes he’s not actually waiting around for anyone. 

He drives himself home.

\--

Kent steps off the treadmill in his home gym, wiping his dripping face on his t-shirt. He’s red, and he’s tired, and his legs are burning. He’s really pushing himself today, in all manners of speaking. Today, he's going to do _something_. Something with another human person. He's so _lonely,_ and it's past time for him to get out of the house.

But first, he's got to get his breath back. After a quick shower, Kent reclines in front of the massive screen in his home theater, grabs a controller, and tries to pick which one of the eight million possible Smash characters he wants to use to beat the shit out of some CPU. After a long period of deliberation, he chooses Peach.

Honestly, it’s always Peach.

He likes Smash because he likes video games, plain and simple. He'll play almost anything but NHL 14, a glorified simulation of Kent’s day job. Smash has major perks that the NHL does not - namely, anime boys. It lets him keep his mind on competition (and not on Jack, or his family, or how _quiet his house is_ ) when he doesn’t have a game scheduled, or when he’s already tired from the gym. And if Kent’s too sore to get his kickboxing gear out, then Peach will just have to do it for him. 

When he's not working or talking, he's thinking, and that's dangerous. He can feel himself going down that path again, knowing that, eventually, it'll lead to Jack. Kent’s not good at being idle; when he’s buzzing out of his skin like this, he has to put the energy somewhere, and he almost always directs it towards training.

Once he's worked out for the day, though, there's not much else to do besides drink and play video games.

He zones out, relying on muscle memory to blast Samus off the stage. By the time he respawns, Kent's already mentally re-assessing the reps he did today and writing the plan for tomorrow. Putting in the (admittedly grueling) work to keep his body in NHL shape is a constant effort, naturally, but it has never been some near-impossible, Sisyphean task for him like it is for some of the older guys on the edge of retirement, or even for a few recently-drafted former NCAA players - the ones who are used to different numbers, different expectations, different demands on the body.

For Kent, it’s about maintaining, packing on muscle where he can while trying to stay lean enough that his speed doesn’t suffer. It's also about genuine enjoyment; Kent's a go-getter, a goal-setter. Even when things were worse than they are now, he never skipped a chance to _work._

Putting time in at the gym is, undoubtedly, the most constructive routine he has. It gives him a foundation on which to build; it keeps him from thinking about what he can’t rebuild. In some ways, he likes that it’s a challenge. If it didn’t overtake his senses, if it didn’t give him that painful payoff, he’d find it a lot less useful for maintaining a focused mentality. It’s helpful in that it’s one overwhelming sensation concealing another, something he's used to numb himself for a decade.

\--

When Kent was four or five years old, he had slammed his hand in his bedroom door. It had bruised within seconds. His father had, instead of wiping his son’s tears, pinched his arm _hard_ until Kent yelped aloud.

“It stopped the hand from hurting, didn’t it?” his father had laughed, basking in Kent’s horrified expression. “Quickest way to stop thinking about pain is to make something else hurt.”

But, being a young child, all that Kent could think was: _My dad just hurt me._

It wasn’t the last time, or the worst time. Not even close. So Kent had found ways to stay far away, at the rink or in parks or inside the Tim Hortons on the square. He had found distractions.

\--

A distraction. That’s what the gym is to him now, perhaps even more than it was then, or at least in different ways. As much as working out is a requirement of the job, it’s also that familiar, necessary get-out-of-hell-free card.

There’s not much else Kent can turn to, besides a few beers. He doesn’t have much of a social life here in Vegas; beyond amicable conversation, he’s had a hard time connecting with his teammates.

Early on, it had felt reasonable; they had been expecting the legend-in-training Jack Zimmermann, after all, and they had gotten Kent Parson, his second-in-command, the kid from nowhere who belonged to nobody. He had just as many on-ice credentials as Jack did - they had won the Memorial Trophy _together,_ after all, and his stats had been highly competitive against, if not arguably _better_ than, Jack’s - but he had been relatively unknown then. He hadn’t had the name recognition, he hadn’t had an identity apart from his in-game chemistry with Jack.

He hadn’t had anything except a reputation for the (debatable) chip on his shoulder and a (non-debatable) penchant for flashy dekes.

He doesn’t begrudge them any of that, not anymore, even though the atmosphere is still habitually chilly. Because of the politics of the expansion draft, a significant number of his teammates came from organizations that didn’t have space for them in a productive line - or a willingness to get them the consistent ice time they needed to move up into a line like that, to develop as players, to showcase their value in a tough, often-dispassionate market. For players like that, getting picked up by a new expansion team can be more than just a fresh start - it often defines the trajectory of their career, pulls them off the bench, puts them on TV.

From what Kent has gathered since he got here, Vegas’s plan for this was to give these guys a chance to earn new reputations by rallying around a solid first-line offensive forward - that’s who the number-one draft pick was supposed to be. But, early on, it became clear to everyone exactly how much the style of that particular forward mattered; in the season prior to the draft, they had kept their eye on the prospect rankings. Jack had been the clear choice for their number-one pick. Assured of their good fortune, they had been building their expectations around a very different sort of player than Kent was, and it showed in early losses, a tense locker room, and unpredictable numbers.

Jack would have been a real Patrice Bergeron kind of guy: humble about his consistent playmaking success, a serious, no-nonsense team player with a generous heart. Kent, on the other hand, was like Patrick Kane: white-hot, cocky and puck-hogging, playing for the highlight reel. Playing for himself, even though he knew to tell the cameras and the coaches otherwise.

There it is. Jack's face, front and center in his mind. Again. _Fuck._

As if to make things worse, the CPU chooses that moment to start really kicking his ass. Kent chalks it up to the fact that the Animal Crossing stage has always been bad news for him. He turns the TV off before it has the audacity to announce how badly he’d fucked up. _GAME--_ click.

It really was time to get out of here, out of this echoey house and into a seat at the bar.

He pings Scraps with a short text: _you up for drinks and pool in like 1hr??_

Scraps texts back just as Kent starts thinking about what to wear. _Plans tonight, raincheck though._

Kent sours immediately, glaring a little at his phone. _okay loser._

When he catches a glimpse of his frown in the blank TV screen, he wonders if he should see someone about smoothing those forehead wrinkles out. He’s twenty-three, and between this and the way his overtaxed knees pop whenever he goes down a flight of stairs, he already feels his youth slipping out from under him.

He squints. Maybe he’ll look into scheduling an appointment with a dermatologist. Sometimes, coping looks like shooting a few units of Botox right between the eyes.

\--

Kent goes out anyway, without Scraps, to one of the bars he likes best. He drives the only non-luxury vehicle he owns, the orange Dodge Charger that he had once sworn up and down was his dream car, the one that Bob Zimmermann had bought him for his seventeenth birthday to commemorate the dedicated one-on-one time they had spent fixing up one of Bob’s many projects, a vintage Ferrari.

They had always bonded over cars.

He parks on the street. The sign above the door says _Curtains,_ likely some half-baked reference to the entertainment-industry side of Vegas that Kent has no interest in. It’s not a _nice_ place, really, but it’s somewhere that he can get a few drinks without being bothered for autographs or awkward, stilted conversations with the general public.

Kent has always liked this part of town for exactly that reason. It’s a little run-down, but that’s not a problem; he has always resented the sterility of the neighborhoods in Summerlin, where his big empty mansion is. Some days, still, he feels like an imposter when he punches in his gate code, or when he puts a deposit down for his Lambo to get a Hatsune Miku wrap. It’s not that he misses the way he grew up, a bad kid in a bad neighborhood, burning through years at a bad school by acting out and dreaming big. It’s just that he can’t pretend he _didn’t_ grow up that way, and it feels odd to be here now, playing the part of a lucky city kid who finally got his big break.

He’s not sure what it means to live a life where he doesn’t have to eat frozen chicken nuggets for breakfast anymore, so sometimes he still does.

\--

Kent orders a vodka soda and finds a dark corner to sit in. Even in a place like this, somewhere far off the Strip and away from the tourists, he can’t be too careful if he wants to get through the night without a few Sharpie-holding people approaching his table.

He likes to watch the patrons go about their night, leaning on the bar, engaging with each other. It’s nice to be around people, even if they're strangers; for all that he’s been hurt, Kent _likes_ people. He always has; he’s an extrovert to his core and he trusts (too) easily, (too) completely.

He wants to be liked, sure, but more than that, he wants to _connect._

Once Kent’s glass is empty, he goes back up to the bar, chats to the guy pouring drinks. After a few more, he gives the guy a massive tip.

\--

“I’ve always wanted to be a bartender,” says Kent, almost an hour after abandoning the table in favor of this more convenient seat at the bar.

“Oh yeah?” says the guy taking Kent’s money.

“Well, no. I wanted to play sports. But I always thought I’d end up--at a garage, you know, working on foreign makes.”

“My buddy has a BMW,” says the guy. “It’s pretty nice.”

“Wow,” says Kent, genuinely, forgetting that he’s the kind of guy with a detached six-car garage for his Lamborghini collection. “I used to--my best friend growing up had a black BMW, this beautiful car. We spent so much time in it, just sneaking out and driving around and whatever. I used to beg him to let me drive it, before I had my own car. We probably put, I dunno, twenty, twenty-five thousand miles on it in two years, just driving around town for no reason.”

The man nods, half-listening, and pours a drink for the girl sitting at the end of the bar. It was some whiskey drink, by the looks of it.

“I could’ve done a lot of things, though, even if I hadn’t worked with cars,” Kent says, tilting the empty glass back and forth on the rubber mat in front of him, letting the half-melted ice slosh around inside. “I like to drink, and I like math.”

“Speaking of drinking, are you ready to close your tab?”

\--

Kent stays there until he can’t anymore. The bartender cuts him off in time for him to sober up before the drive home, because they all know who he is here; he first started coming in when he was at his worst, years ago, when he couldn’t be trusted with his car keys or his own best interests. 

Kent’s different now, better now, but he's not a fundamentally changed person; he just isn’t spinning out on a daily basis anymore.

Shoving his hands in his hoodie pocket, he clicks the _unlock_ button on his key fob. The lights flash on his Dodge Charger, and when Kent starts it up, his iPod links up and auto-scrolls _Autumn Goodbye - Britney Spears_ across the stereo screen. He chokes up, but he doesn’t cry.

\--

_I never promised you a happy ending_

_You never said you wouldn't make me cry_

_But summer love will keep us warm long after..._

\--

When he gets home, he pours another drink, and then another. _Quickest way to stop thinking about pain is to make something else hurt._ Once his vision is blurred at the edges, he makes the same stupid mistake he always does when he’s like this.

\--

_(2:38 am) hey jack i was just telling this bartender about that bmw you had in hgih school haha. do you still have that lol_

_(2:41 am) or like any pictues of it_

_(3:10 am) i just miss how we used to sit in the wendys parking lot in the middle of the night and tlak back when things were good and we had time and you still wanted to see me evne tho i made you order me baconators every time and you hated saying baconators out loud so youd get embarrased and then id make fun of you but youd say it was okay as long as i gave you a kiss haha_

_(3:10 am) do you miss that too_

_(3:58 am) do you miss me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kent's thoughts are rambly because my style is rambly, just go with it
> 
> plot incoming


	4. A4: ice time

Like the sucker he is, Kent’s first impulse upon waking up is to check his phone to see if Jack has responded.

He hasn’t.

Just like he hasn’t the other thousand times Kent’s texted him over the last five years.

Kent wants to yank his phone off the charger and chuck it into the mirror across the room, but he doesn’t.

See, he’s getting better.

\--

When he gets up to shower before practice, he accidentally kicks over a few empty beer cans. The area around the couch is really starting to look like a nest.

\--

There’s something about that quintessential hockey uniform. Not even the literal one, the black-and-white-and-red. Every guy Kent’s ever seen at warm-ups has the same casual style grammar: sweatpants - or track pants, which Kent would never be caught dead in - and a t-shirt underneath a Bauer jacket. Sometimes the guys wear crewnecks, but Kent likes the structure of zip-up jackets better. It’s just a bonus that he has a big-money Bauer sponsorship, so they’re free. 

He’s at the rink early again, and his new watch, a rugged Casio with a digital display and a no-nonsense practicality that sets it apart from his usual luxury watches, reads _5:05 am_. Insomnia works both ways, sometimes. Kent figures that, whenever he’s up, he might as well use that time to grind.

He sets the alarm to give himself a little over an hour of solo skating before he can expect the first injured reserve guys to start trickling in and crowding up the ice for their tailored workouts. When he skates out, the chill rises from the ice and settles in his lungs, on his hands, against his cheeks. He hasn’t had a chance to break a sweat yet, so he pushes his cold hands into his jacket pockets and skates backwards, performing easy, effortless crossovers whenever he senses that he’s approaching a corner.

Honestly, he could lap a regulation-sized rink blindfolded.

Occasionally, Kent skates with his earbuds in, but today is one of those days when he needs to hear how the ice crackles and crunches under his weight, how it shreds and kicks up snow when he shaves his way around a tight corner. The smallest sounds rise up through the bowl and become amplified by the glass before they shatter in the rafters, drifting back down as echoes.

It’s bliss.

After a few lazy laps, Kent picks up the pace, testing the quick footwork that serves as a pillar of his play style. A quick stop slices a few centimeters off the surface of the ice, and he regains his footing with a quick hop-hop-hop and pushes off, gliding, grinning.

_Beep-beepbeep-beep._

The shrill sound is so strikingly familiar that it almost throws him off his zen entirely, back to those cold-but-warm mornings in Quebec, but he doesn’t let it dig quite that deep into him.

When the team circles up at center ice around ten that morning, the only thing that’s on Kent’s mind is hockey.

\--

Sometimes, Kent lets himself dream about playing with Jack again.

Back in juniors, they had made what they thought was an airtight plan: get drafted, sign a relatively-short ELC with their respective teams, and build individual reputations for strong, instinctive, efficient play. Then, when they hit free agency, take a hometown discount with Montreal in exchange for decent ice time and a chance to show what they could do, together.

Their trajectory had seemed so straightforward back then. They sealed whispered promises with soft kisses, tucked into Jack’s bed together, cold fingers trailing up under each other’s sleep shirts just to _feel._ Even if they knew there would be a few years when they wouldn’t be able to play together, ending back up in Montreal had felt like an inevitability. If they had to burn through a few years in Vegas or Long Island to make it happen, so be it.

\--

It frustrates Kent that he’s stuck at a relatively stagnant point in what was supposed to be an exciting, dynamic career - even if that point is, thanks to his most recent point streak, “the best in the world”. If the commentators on SportsNet think that Kent’s at his peak right now, they’ll have the shock of their lives if Jack ever lines up beside him again. 

Kent knows he could perform at an insane level; he just hates having to _wait_ to do it.

He has always been this way. Back in the Q, he would complain to Jack every single morning over a plate of eggs.

\--

“They know we’re going in the first round. Fuck, they know we’re going top five. Top _two._ These same scouts have watched us work out, like, a hundred times already. But now we’ve gotta wait until June for it to count?”

And, every single morning, Jack would say, “It’s not the same, Kenny.” He’d push some eggs around on his plate, consider his options, stab a mushy slice of avocado, neglect to actually bring any of it up to his mouth for the better part of a minute. “And even if it was the same exact reps and everything—it’s part of the process.” 

Jack always steeled himself at this point, like he was defending something personal to him. But it made sense to Kent that even a performative, invasive formality like the combine would feel deeply personal to Jack, who needed the methodical march of milestones in order to track the smallest successes, to make sure that he was following the rules, that he was doing it right, that he was really _actually_ good enough and not just skating by somehow. 

He needed external confirmation in a way that Kent never did. 

It was a respect thing, sure, respect for the process and respect for what it takes to build a legacy, but Jack was also fucking crazy. Kent never tried to argue with Jack about things like that. He’d just shovel his eggs into his mouth and race him down the path outside to start their morning run.

\--

When Kent thinks about it now, he wonders if Jack had the right idea about going through the motions. Kent always wanted to skip around the necessary obstacles, flash his newly-earned credentials, take everything personally, arrogantly, in a different way than Jack did. This was _his_ game; his and Jack’s, and anybody else who had come before them was just warming up the crowd. Solving Jack’s anxiety about his “legacy” was as simple as blowing past Bad Bob’s name in the records book. With all due respect, of course.

It was their world, and those men in suits had better just wave them through the door so they could prove it.

Jack, on the other hand, felt that the hallowed institution of hockey was so objective and detached from his own flawed form that he could only ever hope to be let in, shown around, humored for as long as they needed him. Then, he’d bow out respectfully, he always said, at the first sign of decline, so that he could be certain that he’d given his team every last second of his best years. He took every critique and correction to heart, letting the offhand words of others line the mental box in which he compartmentalized his self-worth.

But, as somber as he always sounded when he talked about hockey, Jack loved it; he really did. Kent saw it in his face every time they skated together in those midwinter pre-dawn hours, in every sudden, bright grin that lit up Jack's ice-blue eyes whenever Kent suggested skating on the pond behind Jack's house.

Jack would never have let that love be good enough, of course, because nothing was ever good enough. But despite what Jack thought in his darkest moments, it would never have stopped him from reaching the heights he barely dared hope that he could reach; Kent knew it then, and he knows it now.

He wishes things had turned out differently.

He wishes Jack could have just one more chance.

\--

There’s still no text from Jack when Kent makes it home to his couch-bed late that night. It’s not unexpected, but it is the reason Kent uses to (internally) defend his decision to drink a few vodka sodas instead of a beer.

He passes out around one, the blue light from the TV flickering onto his sleeping face as it plays a looped video of Jack, in his bright red Samwell jersey, carving up the ice in a series of NCAA highlights.

In three to five business days, that jersey arrives on Kent's front porch in a Samwell University Bookstore box. _Thank you for your purchase, Kent,_ says the shipping label.

"Thank _you,_ " says Kent, to no one in particular.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to every single hockey guy i played with that wore track pants and jackets to the outdoor rink in 20-degree weather.  
> also, i borrowed pieces of this chapter from my other, weirder kent fic where he wakes up in the naruto universe, so if you've read that, some parts of this will sound familiar.  
> and here’s kent’s/jack’s watch: https://www.casio.com/products/watches/vintage/b650wb-1bvt


	5. A5: structure

A few weeks later, Scraps calls in the rain check. 

They don’t go to Curtains, Kent’s dingy dive bar dreamscape. Instead, Kent drives into the city, glancing down at his phone as he navigates. He’s not entirely sure where he’s going - some new place that opened up downtown, apparently.

He gives his keys to the valet and checks his hair in the wing mirrors, always simmering in a low-level worry about the state of his hairline. He’s twenty-three; he's not a rookie anymore.

_Actually, thank God I’m not a rookie anymore._

Once inside, Kent steps up onto a metal stool and drops his keys, phone, and wallet onto some reclaimed-wood high-top table. He didn’t expect Scraps to be the kind of person who would want to patronize some upscale experimental bar like this, but, upon reflection, he realizes that he probably just Googled “good bars in Vegas” and chose one of the first three that came up. _This bullshit isn’t his fault,_ Kent thinks, using a metal cocktail straw to stir the drink that he wishes he hadn’t ordered.

“So, what’s up, how are things?” says Scraps, easy and even.

Kent takes a sip of his too-sweet cocktail and wishes it was a vodka soda. He’s never had a bad one, and he suspects he never will. “Things are okay. I mean, we’re on a good run right now.”

Scraps nods. “I’m just hoping--we’ve got a few months before playoff spots start getting really competitive, and I don’t wanna jinx it, but I’m hoping that we’ve got the Western Conference locked up.”

Kent nods. He doesn’t believe in luck or jinxing: in his experience, if he makes it happen, it happens. If he spins out, goes on a drinking binge, and crashes his first Lamborghini halfway through his first year in the league, it doesn’t happen. Simple; proven.

But, all things considered, at least he still took home the Calder.

He’s better now, and this year, it’s going to happen. He’s coping, and right now that looks like a twenty-two game point streak.

“You got plans for the bye week?” Scraps asks. “I think Jen and I are gonna fly up north, see the family.”

Kent shrugs, stirs his drink, puts the end of the metal straw in his mouth just for something to do. “I was thinking about, like, taking some driving classes.”

Scraps laughs. “What, you have six cars and you still don’t know how to drive?”

Kent smiles his little half-smirk. “I mean fast driving, like, on a course. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that. When I was a kid, I used to watch NASCAR and just--”

“See, that sounds like a hell of a way to spend five days!” Scraps leans in and points at Kent, a teasing grin on his face. “You know what you need? I’d love to see you finally lock down a girl so she can tell you not to do fun shit like that anymore, just like the rest of us. I’m sick and tired of living through you, Parse.”

That stirs something in Kent’s chest, some kind of amorphous, delocalized unease or guilt or anxiety, but he’s gotten so good at pushing that sort of thing down over the past decade that it almost doesn’t even register as abnormal. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to start being boring, man. I’m sure you’ll have a great time baking sugar cookies or whatever with your girlfriend, though, that sounds dope.”

Scraps shakes his head, grinning. “You’ve gotta at least text me a picture of that stupid jumpsuit they’re gonna make you wear.”

“Only if you text me a picture of your apron,” Kent says, finishing his drink. He stands. “You want another beer? I’m gonna get a vodka soda.”

\--

That night, on the couch, Kent finds himself fading to some mid-season episode of _Fruits Basket_ and the sound of his cat purring on his chest. His Casio beeps its two o’clock tune: a pair of staccato beeps.

It’s a late night, but it’s not a bad one.

\--

Kent’s not looking forward to his bye week, mainly because any break in his routine always throws him off his game, no matter how hard he tries to maintain it. Things always have the potential to fall apart in the early months of the new year, just as teams are climbing desperately through the ranks of their given conference, their division, in hopes of clinching a favorable playoff slot.

For the Aces, the autumn months are nothing to worry about. In any given year, the preseason is a blip, just a series of low-stakes games that slide right by without issue. There are, of course, challenges: rookies are always harder to work with, for obvious reasons. Kent can’t fault anyone for that, either; he was the worst rookie imaginable, but that was more about his behavior issues than it was about his hockey performance. 

These early months are always about calibration. New players on the team, whether they be rookies, call-ups, or trades, often struggle to align themselves not only with the group, but also with the flow of movement throughout the game, with expectation, with _style._ The Aces play no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled, offensively-aggressive hockey. It’s risky, it’s demanding, and it’s _hard._ It doesn’t translate easily to new players specifically because it was built largely around Kent’s own skill set: untouchable speed, quick footwork, and impeccable control of the puck. 

This is what allows him to take advantage of breakaways so effectively; if he can just get _out,_ if people are watching his back, he can sling the puck into the top-right corner without choking. He’s exactly the kind of player that a coach would prioritize for a penalty shot, able to deke his way down the ice from the blue line with such finesse that it makes spectators feel like they’re previewing his contribution to the NHL All-Star Skills Competition. 

It’s hard for people to keep up with him. When he was younger, Kent always thought that this was undeniably a strength, but it turns out that it’s more like a two-sided coin: while it’s true that he causes the other team’s defense to lose crucial opportunities, it’s also why he pulls seemingly-endless critique for not being a team player. 

Kent lets it roll off his back. If he’s putting numbers up, he’s helping the team. End of story. He takes direction from his gut and from his coach, in that order. No one else.

Not anymore.

This stubbornness is frustrating for the people Kent reports to, but it _does_ produce results. This puts the Aces management in a difficult position, and Kent resents the power struggle it causes even though he knows it’s his own fault. He’s been brought into the coaches’ offices countless times to discuss his “attitude”, and he knows full well that these uncomfortable, paternalistic meetings are the same sort of thing that Tyler Seguin had to deal with before the Bruins traded him to the Stars for “locker room issues”. 

Every now and then, apropos of nothing, Kent texts Segs the [ picture](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DtwTK48U4AAK6pP.jpg) of him sulking in the stands after incurring a scratch for missing the Bruins team breakfast. He likes making fun of him, but he also likes knowing there are other guys out there who _get_ him. 

Even if it meant that those guys lost their spot on a Cup-contending team as a result.

But, in all fairness, the Bruins hadn’t planned on building their team around Seguin; they’d built it around Bergeron instead. The Aces, on the other hand, had placed all their bets on Kent’s promising rookie numbers, and they had bet _big_ money. As far as Kent is concerned, they’re just going to have to deal with whatever he gives them if it means that their gamble keeps paying off. They have a Cup that they hadn’t had before, and they’ll get a few more if Kent keeps working like he’s working right now.

He has one of the safest jobs in hockey, even if he suspects that, sometimes, re-signing his contract feels (on both sides, really) like penning a deal with the devil. It’s not like he’s keeping the Aces from winning with his individualized play; in fact, the temptation of _another_ Cup win resulting from Kent’s unprecedented and particular brand of egotism is exactly what keeps them picking up the pen.

There’s a particular segment of the season that always inspires the kind of consistent production that, in turn, inspires the Aces coaching staff to give him a break. That sweet spot for Kent - and, therefore, the Aces - is really the time between Halloween and Christmas. Kent can play without pressure; he can bank some choice footage for YouTube highlight reels. The Aces can stack up clean, decisive wins more often than not, punctuated by a few predictable losses that Kent honestly can’t fault anyone for. It’s smooth sailing, with enough excitement to carry them over into the real battlefield: spring playoffs contention.

By the time the New Year rolls around, the coaches have always started dragging them through practiced Aces-branded plays that get pulled up and executed from time to time, season to season - offensive and defensive fallbacks that can help them save a bad situation if one happens to arise. It’s boring, but these formations are the kind of strategy that Kent knows the team needs to keep in their deck. He just can’t get excited about skating up the middle lane with the puck a thousand times a day, teaching any newcomers how to be where he needs them to be for the assist. Specifically, he doesn't like the fact that no one complements his play style like Jack did.

Those frustrating, demoralizing drills are what Kent has to look forward to after their bye week, and he's already exhausted just thinking about it.

\--

“I shouldn’t have to look around, fucking break my stride, like: where’s Moose, right?” Kent calls out to some last-minute trade acquisition. “I need you on my ass, tailing me, all the way up the ice in your lane, and you can’t get caught up in the defense, you’ve gotta help me screen--”

“You can’t expect me to just _know_ where you want me, man,” Moose retorts, red from getting called out in front of his new team like this. “I can’t read your fucking mind.”

\--

In those moments, Kent is always starkly reminded of how _easy_ it was with Jack, how they _didn’t_ have to look at each other to know where they were or what they needed to do, how he and Jack probably _could_ read each other’s minds - on the ice, anyway. It had felt like they were just as linked off the ice, too, but it’s starting to dawn on Kent that maybe they hadn’t been.

Maybe, under all that pressure to get everything else right, Kent had gotten the most important part wrong.

\--

“If you’re looking for me to give you a cue, you’re already too late,” Kent snaps back at Moose, who frowns.

\--

Despite the fact that Swoops and Scraps will sometimes get a drink or sit courtside at a Clippers game with him, Kent’s locker room reputation isn’t that much better than Seguin’s was back in Boston. He has teammates, but he doesn’t have friends.

Come to think of it, if the Stanley Cup pictures served as any indication, Seguin had friends. _Jesus Christ._

It’s always been like this, ever since he caught the wrong flight to the wrong city in the wrong jersey. That’s how he saw it, and that’s how everyone else saw it, too. Kent’s sure of it.

They’ll grumble about his tactics under their breath, accuse him of upstaging their plays, call him an asshole and a control freak and a cocky young kid.

Kent pretends not to hear them, and, sometimes, that’s the most valiant attempt at teamwork that he can muster.

\--

Mostly, he doesn’t let it get to him. He’s got the career to back up his methods, and he’s got the trauma to aid in his compartmentalization.

When it does bother him, though, it makes him feel achingly lonely, isolated in the worst way, like he’s the common denominator in every failed relationship - the sole cause of each unbearable outcome, from his parents’ neglect to Jack’s rejection to his teammates’ resentment. 

Tonight is one of those nights. The only space that his mind will let him inhabit is the gap between himself and everyone else he’s ever known, and it makes his throat burn and his eyes sting. He pours a vodka soda, and he knows that, in the morning, he still won’t be able to convince himself that his isolation is not entirely his fault.

\--

Jack was the first real friend that Kent had ever made, and, so far, he’s been the only one, too. He knows that Jack had been the same way; he never really had anyone before he had Kent, so they had both latched onto each other in ways that other people would likely have found strange and maladaptive. Maybe it _was_ strange and maladaptive, and maybe people _did_ notice that, but Kent didn’t care then and he doesn’t care now. Maybe he's wrong for not letting anyone else in, for not being able to trust people the way he trusted Jack, but he doesn't care about that, either.

He applies the same policy that he uses for the persistent discord in his locker room: let people think what they want; they’ll be right or they’ll be wrong, but Kent will be too far ahead of them to hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "i walk like this cos i can back it up" -beyonce/kent parson


	6. A6: no control

By December, the Aces have once again established themselves as a force to be reckoned with. Kent’s increased focus on training has been paying off over the last few weeks; this season is a real standout for him, which means it’s a standout for the Aces overall. When he does well, so does the team. But this fall in particular has been a series of personal bests, inspired plays, and unshakeable focus; Kent’s not exactly sure why he’s hitting his stride right now, this year of all years, but he’s planning on riding it all the way to the end of the line.

If there ever was a year to make a decent run at the Cup, this was it.

\--

They get three days off for Christmas, and Kent spends all of them learning ping pong trick shots on the new table he bought for himself. He has it shoved into the corner of the living room so that the wall can rebound his serves, and he’s only almost-broken the television twice.

Kent thinks it’s going well. Purrs, for her part, hasn’t dared to walk past the table since it was put up; it only takes the threat of one sudden flying projectile to permanently alter her practiced path to the water bowl.

\--

A few _Merry Christmas_ texts from the Aces group chat light up Kent’s lock screen on the big day, but he doesn’t bother replying. Holidays had never been a particularly positive experience when Kent was growing up, and the sentimental value they held was, as a result, virtually nonexistent.

Later that night, in their unspoken annual tradition, he texts his sister a picture of the beer in his hand. Minutes later, he gets a nearly-identical picture back from her, toasting with him to a lifetime of complicated Christmases and suboptimal circumstances.

\--

Kent hadn’t meant to drink as much as he had on Christmas night, but it’s getting more difficult for him to sleep if he’s only had a few beers, or, worse, none at all. He rolls up into a sitting position on the couch, searching for his phone between the cushions. The time stamped across Evangelion Unit 01- Kent’s background this week - reads _10:24 am._ Huh.

That’s a surprise.

He hasn’t slept past eight o’clock in years; missing morning skate is, in the grand scheme of things, a minor offense, but Kent feels an ominous chill creep down his spine. He has, without realizing it beforehand, lost control of his routine for the first time in a long time.

He feels cold and strange, disoriented, like the dream that he had just been inhabiting was still closer to the surface than it should be. Kent can’t quite identify whether the uneasiness that he feels twisting in his gut is just a shadow of whatever he had been feeling in this half-forgotten dream, or whether something real had jarred him from sleep and set his teeth on edge.

He pushes the comforter onto the floor, breath catching as he is promptly doused in a hazy, sleep-heavy memory that must’ve been Jack pushing back the covers and making his way to the bathroom, creeping quietly across the room, letting the door stand open behind him—

 _Oh._ It had been one of _those_ dreams.

Months have passed since Kent last broke free from the suffocating grasp of that nightmare, drenched, panting, worrying that, somewhere out there, Jack was still suffering in some new version of everything, obscured from Kent in a way that he hadn’t been the first time that he had really needed somebody.

Well, maybe not the first time.

Kent wouldn’t know, because Jack had never talked about it. He had never asked for help, not in any voice that Kent could hear.

\--

But Kent had been there, that time. He remembers everything so clearly from that night: the way that Jack had carefully slid out of bed and onto the floor, waking Kent without realizing or intending to. Once Jack had made it to the hall, or maybe already to the bathroom, Kent had buried his head against Jack’s pillow, finding a sleepy solace in the smell of that soft, dark hair. He’s not sure why he had been absentmindedly listening for him, perhaps just because, at two o’clock in the morning in a silent house, there had been nothing else to catch his drifting attention apart from the creak of the medicine cabinet door.

Jack had done this a few times before, and Kent had always just assumed that he needed a drink from the tap; the paper cups they used after brushing their teeth were kept on the same shelf as Jack’s prescription Xanax bottle, and it had never occurred to Kent that he might be reaching for one over the other. 

Even if it had, Kent would have trusted that Jack, rule-following and routine-reliant to a fault, knew what his body needed. Kent had never truly understood what it was like for Jack; his brain alone had never had the power to shake his confidence, or warp his rationality, or send him into a fit of the shakes. Jack was, in Kent’s eyes, inexplicably burdened by things that no one else could see or feel; because Kent trusted him, he believed in the power of those specters, too. And Jack didn’t like to talk about it, so Kent only knew what he _could_ see: that, sometimes, Jack’s resolve started to crumble from the inside out, and that, whenever that happened, the pills helped.

Kent, young and naive at the time, hadn’t known that there could be anything wrong with that.

\--

He remembers drifting a little, for some uncertain amount of time, before resolving to fight sleep for just a minute longer; he had known that Jack, always predictable and always touch-starved, would have wanted some kind of attention on a rare occasion like this one, having found themselves both unexpectedly awake in the night. But Jack had been in the bathroom forever, much longer than normal, and—

That was when Kent, arm draped over Jack’s pillow, heard the soft _thud_ of Jack’s shoulder falling against the tile, his head making its own cushioned impact directly afterward.

\--

This time, at least, Kent had woken up before he had to relive the sight of Jack’s ice blue eyes staring straight up, unseeing, into the blinding fluorescence.

\--

Kent wishes that he had known how to help him then, when he had been Jack’s trusted confidant, his only friend, his willing partner in vices, plural. Sometimes, Kent’s mouth pressing soft kisses against Jack’s neck had kept the waves of panic from cresting, but not in the same way that the drugs had. Not even close. It had soured his mood, then, to have Jack sideline his attempted distractions in favor of pacing or chasing a few pills with a warm beer from the box they had kept stashed under Jack’s bed, but, even then, all he wanted was for Jack to be okay. If that meant that Jack had to spend the rest of the afternoon listless, robotic, disengaged - well, Jack assured him that it was better than what had happened before he had started taking the medication.

The knot in his stomach is something that grief counselors call survivor’s guilt, he knows, but Kent doesn’t get it the way that most people do. He gets the kind that one can only feel for a boy who _hadn’t_ died, but had suffered a fate even less remarkable than death; perhaps he wasn’t mourning his own survival in the wake of someone else’s passing, but rather his ability to do _more_ than survive in the face of Jack’s smoldering, dormant legacy. In a morbid kind of way, going from "dead" to "alive", from "survive" to "thrive", was like making the step up into some elite bracket from hell. It's fitting. After all, Jack and Kent had always played for the top spot.

Kent can’t be sure if Jack actually resents him for living the life he has, the life that Jack was supposed to have, but he’s punishing himself just in case.

\--

His coach isn’t happy that Kent had no-showed at morning skate. 

If it had been anyone else on the team, it would have been a passing annoyance at most. But, because it was Kent, and because Kent has a history, this kind of slip-up had been immediately recategorized in the coach’s mind as a _big fucking deal._

In fact, it’s such a big fucking deal that Kent hears about it in a text, a voicemail, and then an intensely-uncomfortable meeting.

“Is this really gonna happen again?” says Coach O, as a warning. “This whole saga?”

“No,” says Kent, because it’s the right answer, not necessarily because it’s true. He actually has no idea if it’s true or not; he just wants to get out of this office as soon as possible. More than anything, though, he wants to avoid reliving the mistakes of his first season in front of the man who made sure he had a second one.

“I covered your ass last time, Parse, and you were a small fish in a big pond back then.”

“I know,” says Kent, a little too defensively for the position he’s backing himself into.

“You’re not such a small fish anymore, do you understand me? I can’t keep the media off your back like I could before anyone gave a shit.”

That bites hard into Kent’s ego. “I know,” Kent says, again.

“Take care of it,” Coach O says, and Kent understands it as the threat that it is. He lets it hang between them, over the coach’s desk, like the shadow of some lingering nightmare.

\--

As he makes his way out of the coaching staff's office suite, Kent curses himself for letting the coach notice the very first slip-up he's had in _years_. He's gotten worse at this, now that it's no longer his _modus operandi_ to hide a bad drinking problem behind an even-worse work-life balance. For a while now, it's just been the latter, and his coach has never had anything unsavory to say about _that._

If things go the way they are expected to go, this will be another Cup year for the Aces. Kent knows that his current standard of play is the reason that this expectation has been set, even if things could always go sideways, even if the Lightning pull themselves up in the ranking, even if a thousand things could change between now and early April. If he squanders this, if he lets himself fuck this up, he'll have a lot more to answer for than a mere morning skate absence.

He had been feeling so _good._ Just four days ago, everything had been fine. He'd been lonely, sure, and he'd been drinking more and sleeping less, but that was just Christmas, and Christmases are always terrible. Kent knows what it feels like when it gets bad, when it gets unbearable, when he has to pull back or crash hard. He hadn't thought he was there yet. _What gives?_

On the way out to his car, Kent stops by the bathroom and throws up in the sink. He needs something better, _now._ Something to help him cope. Something he hasn’t had in a while, something that might not even work, because it sure as hell didn’t work last time. But he has to try.

\--

Sometime around midnight, in a stunningly desperate move, Kent scrolls far back through his iMessage inbox and texts an unsaved number.

_this is kent parson._

_when can I see you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: i know i said “plot incoming” a few A/Ns ago but now that i have actually forced myself to write out the plot in a series of disorganized bullet points, i hope you can see it slowly seeping into what i'm writing instead of just lingering in my brain
> 
> also, for those of you who watch me fuck with the tags on a daily basis, you’ll notice that i put whiskey in there, and the reason is: i love connor whisk and i think he and kent go together in indescribable ways. i’m planning on describing them. please hold.
> 
> disclaimer: i have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, so when i describe jack's experiences, i just turn the dial of what i experience up to a 10. y’all’s anxiety may manifest differently but this is what i know so it’s what i’m writing lmao


	7. B1: name the problem

“So, why now?” says the woman sitting in front of him.

Kent runs his fingers under the ribbing of his sweatshirt sleeve, against the thin skin of his wrist, just to give himself a tactile sensation to focus on. He has always needed touch, in the way that other people need kind words, or meditation, or their favorite food on a rainy day. “Nothing’s changed since the last time I was here,” he volunteers, finally.

The therapist watches him for a minute. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she says, too gently for Kent’s liking. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re here now. Why not six months from now? Why not a year ago? I’m curious about the mindset you’re in right now, and what led you to get in contact with me.”

Kent is already regretting this beyond belief. He _hates_ therapy. 

\--

When he was here before, five years ago, it was in the wake of his first DUI. Even though they prevented the media from ever picking it up, it got the team staff’s attention; he hadn’t exactly been _healthy_ up until that point, or at least reacting in healthy ways to the circumstances leading up to his rookie year, but crashing his new car into a light pole on a dark, empty highway was the wake-up call that everyone had answered — except for Kent. They’d put him on reserve, citing some vague, imaginary “upper body injury”, and sent him to a rehab clinic on the organization’s dime. Once he’d finished his weeks-long sentence, they’d sent him back to his empty desert mansion, at which point he had been expected to seek out league-sponsored therapy with Dr. Anne Fallman for a reasonable duration. 

Kent hadn’t found any of it particularly helpful. At the time, his problem hadn’t been the drinking; it had been the fact that his best friend was in a medically-induced coma twenty-five hundred miles away — for all Kent knew, since he hadn’t heard from him in months — and nothing and no one could have ever prepared Kent to go through that alone. Even now, Kent thinks he would have been stupid to try to do it sober. Kent’s resilient, sure, but he’s not superhuman.

Back then, he didn’t think he needed this; now, he knows he does, because he’ll never get Coach O off his case without proof that he’s dealing with it somehow. This is what they’d asked for last time, so it’s what they’ll get this time.

But that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with the idea, or that he would ever have signed up for a spot on this couch if he knew of any other way around it. Kent finds it incredibly difficult to be at ease in this too-familiar office, the same one he had found himself in when he was eighteen and stubborn and _hurt._

It’s not the sterility of the office that he resents so much as it is the nature of the conversations they have behind its doors; he hates when people walk on eggshells around him, when they choose their words carefully, when they try not to hurt his feelings. That’s not how Kent has been trained to communicate. He’s used to his coaches raking him over the coals, cussing him out, dictating consequences. 

When he’s on the ice, or on the bench, or in the coach’s office, he knows the playbook by heart: keep his head down, nod a few times, give the right answers, apply corrections. 

He’s not used to feeling like every question he’s being asked is a loaded one, like the whole conversation is a minefield that Kent has to traverse without blowing up, like the only thing he has to look forward to if he makes it through to the other side is _more minefields,_ every other Tuesday at two o’clock.

\--

“I missed morning skate,” he says, clipped and quiet. “On Monday. The Monday after Christmas.”

“Why was that?” asks Dr. Anne Fallman.

Kent sets his jaw. This is tedious, and awful, and he signed himself up for every bit of it. If he had a choice between sitting through the rest of this or going back to Coach O’s office to relive the verbal flogging he’d had on Monday afternoon, he’d be on the highway already. “Because I was up late the night before,” he says. “And I drank too much, and I didn’t realize. I just slept through it. It wasn’t like I tried to get out of it or something.”

She nods, clearly choosing to set his defensiveness aside for the moment. “Is that typical for you?”

“Is _what_ typical for me?”

“Missing important events, struggling to manage your time—”

“No,” says Kent, irritated. “I wouldn’t be in the NHL if I couldn’t manage my time. If I didn’t have discipline. It’s kind of a requirement of the job.”

Dr. Fallman nods again, infuriatingly, as if she understood anything at all about the world that had defined Kent’s whole life up to this point, and will, with all luck, define it for the next decade or so. “I imagine that it must feel highly stressful sometimes. You have a lot of pressure on you to perform, and—”

“That’s how it should be!” Kent snaps. “It’s my job!”

“Just because it’s your job doesn’t mean it can’t take a toll on you, Kent,” she says.

“No, like—” Kent drops his hands in his lap, frustrated that she’s trying to console him, frustrated that she’s doing it from the wrong angle entirely. “It’s not about the—the time management shit. I don’t mind — my job is fine. It’s — I’m here because I lost control, because I haven’t lost control since the last time that I was really bad, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

Dr. Fallman finally looks pleasantly satisfied, like she has prompted the answer from him that she had been looking for all along. “There,” she says. “That’s why you’re here, right? Because you lost control recently, and you didn’t like how it affected you?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, feeling oddly winded.

“Let’s dig into that,” says Dr. Fallman. “What does it mean for you to lose control? What drives the loss of control in your life?”

Kent frowns, sitting forward a little. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Let me try to clarify. When you lose control, what causes it? What happens when you lose control?” Dr. Fallman crosses her legs, pen against her bottom lip. “For example, someone might have a bad day at work, and that might make them feel angry. Then, they might come home and pick a fight with their spouse, or go to a gym and take it all out on a punching bag.”

Kent thinks about that. “I don’t feel angry,” he says, after a while.

“It doesn’t have to be anger. That’s just an example.”

Kent chews his lip, thinking back. “It’s not like anything bad happened,” he says. “I just drank too much on Christmas. Name one person on Earth who doesn’t do that.”

“So would you say that alcohol is often part of the equation? I know that, when you were here before, that was a concern, but I also recognize that a lot may have changed for you since we last spoke.”

“Not really so much anymore,” says Kent. “But — I mean, last time I was here — yeah. That whole situation is what I’m trying to avoid. I don’t want to — I want to keep the coaches off my back, I want to keep the media out of my business, like — I just want to do what I have to do. I don’t want to end up in a situation like last time, where they put me on IR and made me go to a fucking daycare—”

“A recovery clinic,” Dr. Fallman supplies, unhelpfully.

“Whatever!” Kent sits back against the couch, picking at the peeling A on his team sweatpants. “It didn’t work anyway, and neither did the therapy part afterwards. It might as well have been daycare, and just, like, talking about my _feelings_ _—"_

“It sounds like you’ve been frustrated with the lack of a particular outcome,” she says. “What is it you’d like to get out of therapy this time around? If you’d like, we can work on developing some specific strategies, some coping mechanisms, things like that. Would it feel helpful to have a few things like that to fall back on when you need them?”

“I don’t know, I just want to figure out how to make people give me a fucking break for once,” says Kent, and that makes him choke up. He hates himself a little for it, but the lump in his throat is there, now. There’s nothing he can do about it at this point besides trying to ensure that Dr. Fallman doesn’t notice.

“I hear some emotion in your voice,” she says. _God damn it._ “You’ve mentioned the idea of control, and it seems like that’s what you’re reacting to here. Do you feel like your current situation is out of your control?”

“I guess,” says Kent. “I mean, I know that I have the discipline to — show up, like, I know that part’s on me. But I wish that I could just keep it private, like, I wish that my business was my business, you know? Last time, they just took over, and—”

“It’s true that your team staff has been taking over the management of your recovery,” she says. “I can see how that would make you feel like you aren’t in control of what happens to you. Does it perhaps feel like other people are forcing you to do things you don’t want to do? Maybe for personal things that you’d rather deal with on your own, or outside of work, at least?”

Kent nods and frowns again, but this time it’s because, if he doesn’t, he’ll cry. “I just want them to leave me alone,” he says, childishly. He resents how it sounds coming out of his mouth, but he can’t deny that it’s true. “I try so fucking hard to do what I need to do. I do more than anybody else out there, and everybody knows that. But they come down on me like — just because I made mistakes before, just because I was a _kid_ whose _best friend_ had just — like, what the fuck was I supposed to do? _What was I supposed to do?_ And now they don’t trust me to do anything by myself. I got chewed the fuck out for missing _one_ optional skate, I didn’t even miss practice, it was _optional,_ I just always go because _I do more than everybody else_ and — that’s what I _mean,_ like, it’s just the _expectation_ for me to do great, they just look over my fucking shoulder and treat me like a kid because I had a problem _five years ago!_ Fuck everything else, fuck all the blood, sweat, and tears, it’s suddenly a big fucking problem if I miss _one skate_ and now I have to come here and see some fucking shrink or they’ll think I’m gonna spin out again—”

Dr. Fallman lets him run out of breath before she speaks. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “They didn’t ask you to get in touch with me this time, did they?”

“No,” says Kent.

“I want to commend you for making that step, then,” she says. “You’ve come a long way since the last time I saw you.”

Kent blots his eyes with his sweatshirt sleeve, red in the face from embarrassment as well as the tears. “It’s not that deep. I just want to be able to tell my coaches that I’m—”

“That you’re taking control of your responses,” says Dr. Fallman, pointedly. 

Kent’s Casio beeps, signaling the end of the hour. “Thanks, Anne,” he says, sheepish.

She smiles, warmly, and stands with him, offering her hand. “Of course. I’ll see you in two weeks, Kent.”

\--

At practice on Thursday morning, Kent skates over to Coach O during their water break.

“Hey,” he says. “I wanted to let you know that, uh, I talked to Anne Fallman on Tuesday.”

“Who the hell—”

“She’s the—” Kent tries to speak in a low voice; he’s almost positive that, if Carl heard about this, Kent would never _stop_ hearing about this. “The therapist, from — last time. I just wanted you to know that I’m working on it. And — that I’m managing it on my own. And that I’m not gonna put the team in jeopardy this time.”

Coach O regards him with a sort of unreadable gaze. “All right, Parse,” he says, evenly, after a while. “Get your ass back out there, and don’t waste any more of my goddamn time with this shit.”

Kent grins, relieved and assured. “I won’t, Coach,” he says, and skates back into position for their scrimmage.

\--

They win the next game, handily. Kent scores two goals and rewards himself with a pick-up order from the steakhouse he likes. It’s a long drive back out to his house in Summerlin, but the sunset is so nice that Kent almost doesn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s/o to my bff and social worker pal aeryn (kouje on ao3) who helped me with therapist-style dialogue and also made me a cup of lemon water while i was editing this


	8. B2: anger and coping

Sometime in mid-January, Kent decides that he’s feeling stable enough to put the Samwell game up on his home cinema screen. Jack’s team is scheduled to play Union College at the rink in Schenectady, and Kent takes any chance he can get to root against teams from his home state of New York. He brings a few beers down from the fridge and cracks the first can open one-handed as he hops down into the sunken cinema room, taking his usual seat at the front. 

He loves any excuse to watch hockey for fun, in a way that doesn’t impact his own play, his own schedule, his own run for the Cup. Well, his _team’s_ run, if he is attempting to be cognizant about the teamwork-above-all mandate. Lately, he has been.

The snowy New York landscape panning by on Kent’s screen is overlaid with audio from some chipper ECAC announcer. 

“This is one of the matchups we’ve been looking forward to, Tom,” he says. “Samwell and Union. I’m sure we’ll see both of them in the Frozen Four later on this year.”

“Right, Eddie,” says Tom. “Two really strong teams, both with really stand-out forwards. Obviously we’ve got Neiman here in New York, and Samwell has Zimmermann, who’s been having a pretty good season.”

Kent smirks at that. He can almost hear a sixteen-year-old Jack’s pained voice in his head: _“‘Pretty good?’ Is that all they think?_ _”_

On the screen, seated at the announcers’ desk, Tom and Eddie trade laughs. “It seems like Zimmermann’s finally coming out of his shell this season,” says Tom, like everyone is in on some misguided joke about Jack being a habitual underperformer, or a problem, or a child. “His coach says he’s been finding a lot of success, creating a lot of opportunities, since Bittle joined his line.”

Kent sets his jaw. He knows that, if he’s playing hockey and Jack’s playing hockey, and they’re not playing together, the obvious conclusion is that they’re playing hockey with other people. But it still feels, in some strange way, like infidelity. Kent can’t lean into his stride with Moose because he’s _not Jack;_ although he would never wish Ls on anyone apart from his direct competition, Kent realizes that some small part of him had been hoping, for purely selfish reasons, that Jack hadn’t steadied his game yet, either.

He’s going to watch Bittle’s back like a hawk for this whole game.

“And Neiman’s really playing a two-hundred-foot game this year, he’s surely one of the better defensive forwards in the NCAA right now—”

\--

As he loses interest in the commentary, Kent finds himself picturing, without any hesitation, the pre-game ritual that Jack must be walking himself through at this very moment: pacing, sandwich, pacing, taping his stick, snapping at someone, pacing, sandwich, gear.

It’s not unlike his own, even now.

It hurts to think that Jack is doing that without him now, even though he’s been doing it without Jack for years.

Kent supposes that, in his own (often poor) attempts at self-preservation by compartmentalizing any external Jack-related information, he has neglected to realize how fully and completely Jack has been living, struggling, maybe even thriving, just the same as Kent has, since they last saw each other. It’s an uncomfortable thought, enhanced by the jealous twinge that pricks Kent’s gut when he engages with it.

Of course he knew, logically, that Jack has always been out there somewhere, in rehab or at his parents’ house or holed up in some university library, while Kent had been scoring his way to the top as an NHL point leader. 

And of course he has always thought about Jack, about what he might be up to: going about his business, teaching a rink full of kids how to execute a toe drag, scrubbing the salt buildup off the bumper of his BMW during those nostalgic Montreal winters. 

Then, when Samwell had announced that Jack Zimmermann was on their roster in 2011, Kent had followed the frayed ends of the story with a kind of all-consuming tenacity. There hadn’t been much information in any of those ten-line heads-up stories about why Jack was there, why he had matriculated _then_ and not earlier (or at all), or how Jack was feeling about it all (naturally, Kent had never expected a news story to give him the latter, but since it was the only thing he actually cared about when it came down to it, he found himself getting frustrated at the cadre of college sports journalists anyway).

But the factor that makes this thought an uncomfortable one is not that Kent _wants_ Jack to suffer, in some sociopathic way. It has never been like that. Rather, Kent has always hoped that Jack was happy, fulfilled, better than he was before. It's just odd that it's happening where Kent can't see. He wants to be there for these new, crucial aspects of Jack's life, his successes, the raucous celebrations, those nights when Jack feels light enough to turn over in bed and whisper, "Today was good, I think."

He _was_ that boy for Jack, once, back when those highlights were much rarer. He wonders if Jack has a new boy for that now, or a girl, because Jack had always kissed girls, too, even when he was only supposed to be kissing Kent.

\--

On the cinema screen, Samwell takes the ice. The camera is too far away for Kent to identify who is who as the players skate in semi-chaotic circles to a thrumming bass buzz, a phenomenon that has always strangely reminded Kent of droning, angry bees. The Union team gets a much more enthusiastic reception from their home crowd as they, too, swarm the ice and slice up the perimeter of their zone.

When Kent first catches sight of Jack, now settled in on the bench, it makes his heart skip. It always does, every time.

\--

Samwell loses the game, but only narrowly. From the announcers’ point of view, this was not unexpected, nor will it greatly alter Samwell’s chances at a Frozen Four spot. Still, as he goes upstairs to heat up his steakhouse leftovers, Kent imagines that someone has assigned themselves to the standard post-loss task of talking Jack off a ledge for fifteen minutes, minimum.

The microwave dings, and Kent slices up the ingredients for his steak sandwich. It’s always the mundane moments like these that give Kent pause.

 _Who makes Jack’s pre-game sandwiches now?_ Kent thinks, peeling the plastic away from a Kraft cheddar slice. He rips it in half and places both halves carefully onto the bread.

_Does he still like mine better?_

\--

He meets with Dr. Fallman again, and, this time, it’s even harder to convince himself to get out of his car once he’s at the office. He _really_ hates this. But, if he stops going now, Coach O will cut him exactly zero slack for the rest of his career.

“Happy Tuesday, Kent,” Dr. Fallman says, cheerfully, when he sits down across from her.

He wrinkles his nose, just a little. “I’m okay today,” he says, answering a question that she didn’t ask. Kent’s all about efficiency; he knew she would ask it eventually, so he might as well give her the answer up front.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she says. “Tell me about your week. How have you been since I last saw you?”

“I’ve been going to practice like normal,” Kent says, fiddling with the Howie’s PopSocket on his phone. “I told my coach that I was coming here again.”

She nods. “What did he say to that? I’d be interested to know, given what we spoke about last time.”

“He was cool with it.” Kent stretches an arm over the back of the couch and sits wide, hooking his foot behind the other ankle. “It went great. I just told him I was taking care of my own shit and he seemed to get it.”

Dr. Fallman smiles, and it looks genuine. “That’s great,” she says. “How did it feel to take things back into your own hands?”

Kent shrugs. “It’s fine. Like I said before, I just kind of want to get them off my back.”

“Right,” says Dr. Fallman. “That feels important. I’d hope that you would want to come to therapy on your own terms, too, though.”

Kent grins. “Are you kidding? Like, no disrespect, but I actually fucking hate being interrogated for an hour about shit that I don’t want to think about.”

Dr. Fallman nods. “I definitely don’t want this to feel like an interrogation,” she says. “I’m hearing you say that there are topics that you’d rather steer clear of for the time being, and I want to respect that. So, for now, I’ll let you set the agenda. You can just _talk,_ and I’ll listen. Is there anything you need to get off your chest?”

Kent shrugs again, sits back against the couch, runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to talk about hockey,” he says. “This whole thing — it’s not about hockey at all. Hockey’s actually the only thing that’s good, so.”

“Then let’s not talk about hockey,” says Dr. Fallman. “I’m curious about your last statement, though. What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, you know by now, like — I’ve had a lot of shit thrown at me,” Kent says, starting to settle into the sullen, dark mood that therapy always puts him in. “But I don’t want to talk about my childhood, either. And I don’t want to talk about Jack.”

Dr. Fallman nods. Kent fully expects her to remember who Jack is; the last time that he was on her caseload, he had broken down in front of her every single time that Kent had tried to say his name.

“I guess we could talk about strategies,” he says, after a long moment. “You said you could teach me how to cope.”

Dr. Fallman tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, adjusting her glasses. “We could definitely work together on some coping mechanisms,” she says. “It’ll be a process, but we can get started in this session so that you’ll have a few things to work with when you leave today.”

“Baller,” says Kent.

Dr. Fallman nods and tucks her pen into the metal spiral at the top of her notebook. “First things first, I just want to get a better idea of what you do right now when things go poorly, or when you can’t shake a bad mood.”

Kent furrows his brow. “I don’t think I really have bad moods,” he says. “I’m a pretty easy-going guy. I mean, sometimes — I get sad, or I get — you know, I wake up from a nightmare and it’s — but most of the time, like, if I have a bad game or a bad practice, I can just suck it up. It’s part of life.”

Dr. Fallman nods again, making good on her promise to just _listen._ Kent finds it mildly uncomfortable to sit there on her couch, silent, watching her watch him. Once she looks down to make a few notes, he settles in again, calmer.

“I’ve actually found something that really helps,” he says. “Earlier this year, I started getting my nightmares more often, like, a couple of times a week.” He hesitates. “I don’t want to talk about, like, the actual nightmares, but — anyway. I couldn’t sleep, and it was wrecking my game. So I took all my blankets downstairs and started sleeping on the couch. It’s been dope.”

“Do you sleep on the couch every night now, or just when you have nightmares?” Dr. Fallman asks.

“Every night,” Kent says. “I’ll just put something on TV and drink a few beers until I can’t keep my eyes open. I just pass out, like I used to when I was a kid and me and my sister would watch _Jeopardy_ in the living room. It works super great, because — like, before, when I was upstairs, I’d just lay there awake for hours because I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want to have those nightmares, you know? So — now, it’s better.”

Dr. Fallman makes a note on the page in front of her. “I want to clarify something that you just told me,” she says, and Kent immediately feels like he’s made some unknowable mistake. Therapy is a _trap._ “Would you say that these things, sleeping on the couch and watching television, are tools that you use to make sure you can get to sleep at night?”

“Yeah,” says Kent trepidatiously, unsure of where he went wrong. “Yeah, for sure.”

“Okay. You also mentioned having a few beers before you went to sleep. Are those tools, too?”

“Yeah, they’re my night beers,” says Kent, oblivious.

Dr. Fallman’s expression is entirely, infuriatingly unreadable. “And how many — night beers — how many of those do you have, daily?”

“Depends on the night,” says Kent. “Sometimes, not that many, just a couple. Sometimes it’s a lot. That’s what happened on Christmas, I just — had too many. But I’d also been drinking stronger stuff before, like, because it was Christmas — so I had some vodka sodas.”

“Right,” says Dr. Fallman. “I’d like to start working with you on some coping mechanisms that don’t involve alcohol.”

Kent stills. “That’s not a problem for me anymore. I already told you that.”

She appears to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Kent can’t be sure. They’re venturing into dangerous territory, and Kent isn’t sure if he should dig his heels in or run. “I think you might find more consistency through other avenues,” she says eventually, in that calculated manner that makes Kent’s skin tingle all over, like he’s breaking out in hives.

“Jesus Christ,” says Kent, forceful and _mad,_ now. “Just call me a fucking alcoholic and be done with it. Like, let’s not beat around the bush. If that’s what you think about me, if that’s all you think I am, then fine. Just fucking say it to my face instead of scribbling it down and locking me back up again in some fucking clinic.”

Dr. Fallman takes a second to respond. Made irrational in his anger, Kent hopes that she feels hurt. She’ll get over it; he won’t. That’s the whole point, the whole reason he’s here; he can’t get over _anything._ “Why don’t we refocus—”

“No,” says Kent. “I’m done, I’m going home.” He stands, ready to leave.

“All right,” says Dr. Fallman. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Okay,” says Kent, and tugs the door shut behind him with a _snap._

\--

Kent is _boiling._ He drives home on the highway, pushing ninety the whole way. He takes a shower, heats up a meal-plan chicken wrap, and tears it apart like an animal. He watches _2 Fast 2 Furious_ on the big TV, and when it’s over, he books a haircut appointment because he can’t stand the way his cowlick looks in the reflection on the dark screen. In the end, it takes him three hours to calm down from a fifteen-minute conversation. Those are bad statistics. 

He pours himself a vodka soda.

\--

By the time that Kent’s bye week rolls around, he has all but forgotten his idea to spend it on the speedway. Instead, he wakes up at five o’clock in the morning on the first day, downloads the Buffalo Wild Wings app, and punches in an order for a party-size tray of one hundred boneless wings (original Buffalo sauce, bleu cheese dip). 

When Kent walks in to pick it up later that day, the man at the counter says, “You must be having a hell of a party for a Monday night.”

“Oh yeah,” says Kent. “Yeah, for sure.”

\--

He doesn’t go to therapy that week.

He does watch the Samwell/UMass game, though. When Jack’s team wins, the camera zooms in on Jack’s bright blue eyes, his sweaty brow, his relieved grin.

Kent smiles back, from far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is anyone surprised that kent doesn't respond well to therapy lmao
> 
> i should start going easy on y'all with these rapidfire chapter updates but...sometimes...that's just how it is. i post things as soon as i finish them so here we are


	9. B3: interview

“So, how was it?” asks Scraps, tugging on the strap to secure his shoulder pad.

Kent looks up from his skate laces, confused. “How was what?” 

“Racing cars, you know, over the bye week.”

“Oh, right,” says Kent, remembering their conversation from weeks ago. In his mind’s eye, he is transported back to his kitchen, where the empty, unwieldy Buffalo Wild Wings platter has been unceremoniously stuffed behind his trash can, awaiting its banishment to the recycling bin outside. “Uh, it was dope.”

Scraps grins. “You never texted me a picture,” he says. “I had one of me in the apron all ready for you.”

“I bet you did,” Kent says, and gives him a quick, polite half-smile. “Hey, let me finish up here, man. I’ve got to do a pre-game interview in, like, five minutes.”

\--

Even after all the curveballs that have been thrown at him during media events over the course of his career, Kent _really_ isn’t expecting this one. 

When Kent walks into the auxiliary room, Bob Zimmermann is sitting at the table, facing him. He is about to be interviewed by Bob Zimmermann. _Holy shit._

Kent needs to throw up. _Now._ His eyes dart around for an exit, but it’s too late.

“Kent Parson,” Bob calls across the room, with all the booming jubilance of a hockey announcer, a favorite coach, and a surrogate father all wrapped up into one grinning, approachable figure. “It’s been too long, non?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, a little breathless, and he tries to laugh, if only to ease the nausea twisting in his stomach. “Yeah, hey, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Bob makes a show of traversing his way around the room, saying to the sound crew as he passes by them, “Excuse me, excuse me, I have to get past you, this guy over here—we go pretty far back, eh, Kent?”

Kent almost can’t believe that he’s still standing. His skin is prickling with heat, something akin to embarrassment, or perhaps familiarity; it’s unclear, but it _is_ overwhelming. His stomach is tied up in a sailor’s knot. With every step that Bob takes towards him, Kent feels like he’s being swallowed up by ever-advancing waves, a tossing, churning sea of guilt and baggage and _hurt._ He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do once Bob reaches him: a handshake feels too formal, but nothing at all feels worse—

“Come here, let me give you a hug, gear and all,” Bob says, grinning at Kent. 

Suddenly, he’s plunging underwater. Bob pulls Kent close to his chest before he even has a chance to breathe, and now, Kent has no choice but to cling onto him. 

Bob is big, square-chested and broad-shouldered, and Kent squeezes his eyes shut against his collar. He’s drowning in his old life, his old (false) sense of security, when he thought he had found his family after all. 

When Kent was a teenager, hockey had delivered him from his desperate circumstances in Buffalo. He had trusted that the Zimmermanns, this perfect, happy family that had opened their doors for him, set their table for him, made a bed up for him, would deliver him in the same way from solitude, from lovelessness, from inexplicably-routine rejection. It had happened that way, at first. But that had changed when everything else did.

When he first arrived in Quebec, he knew that he had been dealt a lucky hand rather than a fated one. It had felt so unreal, even then. It feels even less real now, somehow, even in the face of the pain that was surely there, more present than ever.

“It’s good to see you, my boy,” Bob says, softly, patting Kent’s back through his pads. “It’s been too long.”

Kent is gripping the back of Bob’s sweater, face against his shoulder, immovable. He hadn’t wanted their first post-rift meeting to be like this, with Kent unable to control himself, emotional, clingy. But how else was he supposed to react? What had he expected of himself, a boy who had lost not just one family, but two? 

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts._ It hurts to hang on; it would hurt worse to let go. 

“I missed you,” Kent chokes out, finally, so quiet that the surrounding sound techs certainly don’t appear to hear him, at least. “I missed you so much, you and Alicia.” _And Jack._ But that, almost surely, goes without saying.

Bob smiles, warm, and keeps Kent tucked close for another moment. “You have been so busy,” says Bob, like that was ever the reason for any of this. But it gives Kent an out, and he knows better than to waste it.

“Yeah,” says Kent. “Yeah, I have.”

“Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me what you’ve been up to?” Bob says, guiding him to a chair, a radio microphone, a distraction. “Let’s talk about this game, and then, once we’re off the record, maybe we can talk about dinner.”

Kent nods, steadying himself, and fits the headphones over his ears. “Sure. Sounds good.”

\--

After the game, Bob and Kent meet up at an Italian restaurant. He orders two courses for each of them — Bob has always delighted in ordering for the table — as well as a bottle of wine. “You like reds, non?”

“Sure,” says Kent, still dissociating slightly from the shock of their unexpected reunion.

Bob nods. “How is your French now, hm? I want to hear about this game, you know, but I can’t stand talking in English anymore.”

Kent laughs and takes a sip of his wine. He had spent his early days in the Q struggling to understand the directions that their coaches had shouted to them across the ice; that had been uncomfortable, but he could at least follow the other boys’ lead. The real problem had been his high school classes. Never one to flounder for long, though, Kent had become reasonably fluent within a few months, and his talent for languages had stuck with him over the course of his time in the NHL. Nowadays, though, he mostly kept up with his French over drinks with the few Québécois players he knew. 

“J’ai mal joué,” he says, running his tongue over his wine-stained teeth. _I didn’t play so well._ Bob was one of the only people capable of extracting a humble response from Kent when it came to reviewing his on-ice performance. “Ç’a été ordinaire pour moi aujourd’hui.” _Today wasn’t a great day for me._

Bob laughs. “Rapport, c’est même pas vrai.” He holds his glass up, toasting Kent’s game-winning goal. “Tu as gagné.” _Nonsense, that’s not true at all. You won._

Kent smiles, and when he meets Bob’s kind, coffee-brown eyes, his smile spreads into a grin. It feels so good to have this again, this easy conversation with someone who wants to see him do well. Therapy has nothing on this, and it never will. If Kent could just call Bob up when he needed to talk things through, he’d be a lot better off. If he just had one person in his corner, just _one,_ perhaps he wouldn’t feel so alone.

Kent leans forward, feeling truly at ease for the first time in years, and lets himself relax.

\--

“Il en reste,” Bob says, softly, indicating the bread at the center of their table. _There’s still some left._ The rest of their food has been eaten, the bottle of wine has run dry, but it seems as though neither of them are quite ready for the meal to end. 

Kent shakes his head and chews his lip, feeling the cold creep of loneliness beginning to engulf him. He hadn’t realized how completely it had held him in its unfeeling grasp, every minute of every day, until Bob had promptly banished it with a smile and a casual conversation over a modestly-expensive cabernet sauvignon.

Bob picks up the check and walks with Kent out to the parking lot. Suddenly, Kent is gripped by the unbearable reality that Bob is about to get in his rental car and drive away. 

“Hey,” Kent says, quickly. “I actually — I was wondering if I could get your number. I don’t know if it’s changed, or if you’d want me to have it, but — I’d like to, you know, keep in touch. If you want.”

In any other moment, in front of any other man, Kent would inwardly cringe at the shakiness in his voice, the desperation that he’s sure is detectable, shameful, pathetic. But it’s different with Bob, because _everything_ is. Bob remains the only man in the world to have ever looked at Kent and seen him for exactly who he was: a child, and now a young man, who needed a hand on his shoulder and the wind at his back.

“Of course, of course,” says Bob, surprising Kent with his willingness to oblige. “Give your phone to me, let me punch it in. I have two numbers now, you know, one American and one Canadian, for work.”

Kent hands him his phone, and when Bob hands it back, he follows it up with another one of his warm smiles.

“Be safe on the road home,” says Bob, squeezing Kent’s shoulder. “I know you have always been a fast driver.”

“I will,” Kent says, looking up into his face, feeling every bit like the child that he had been the last time that he and Bob had shared anything at all: a conversation, a meal, a bond. 

He bites his lip. Kent doesn’t want to ask the question that has been lingering on his tongue all night, but he thinks that the regret might eat him alive if he leaves it unsaid. “And — Bob?”

“Mm?”

“I just — how’s Jack?”

It bursts out of him, too loud, and hangs in the air between them for a few moments. Kent worries that it might be an unwelcome question, one that Jack might have forbidden Bob from answering, one that Bob, independent of Jack’s preferences, might not wish to answer.

But Kent does get an answer, regardless. “He’s doing well at his school,” Bob says, soft and sympathetic, like he thinks it might be hard for Kent to hear that Jack is doing well without him. “But I know that he will never be happy until he is playing at your level, of course.” It’s an easy answer, an opaque one, but Kent still nods, because it’s true. Even though he hasn’t spoken to Jack in years, he knows that it could never stop being true. 

“Well — if you talk to him — tell him I’m leaving room in the record books for him, eh?”

Bob smiles, and it’s real. He ruffles Kent’s hair, tucking his head close in another hug. “I’ll tell him,” he says. Kent can’t tell if he’s lying or not, but the possibility that he isn’t gives him something to hold onto. He chooses to believe him.

“Thanks,” Kent says, into Bob’s coat. His voice warbles, catching on the lump in Kent’s throat. “Thanks, I—”

“Hush,” says Bob, because, for the second time today, Kent is crying.

\--

Kent has many, many beers that night.

There’s no doubt in his hazy mind that a few IPAs are the only thing standing between him and his recurring nightmare. His plan is to stack up as many cans as possible between himself and the image of that tiled bathroom floor, until he can’t see it anymore, until he can’t see anything but black.

When he wakes up, it’s long past ten o’clock. Kent has never been more thankful that they don’t have practice on Wednesday mornings.

This time, his slip-up flies under the radar.

As a defining feature of his play style, Kent never makes the same mistake twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quebecois is hard and weird compared to metropolitan french so please forgive me if there are mistakes. to be clear: english is also hard and weird.
> 
> you may be thinking: why has bob been so distant for the past five years if he always liked kent / didn’t blame him for jack’s overdose??? the short answer is: it’s complicated. do any of us always make the right choices on the backs of traumatic events? as is probably clear, bob has made a lot of questionable choices on both sides of one particular traumatic event. this was one of them.
> 
> you may be thinking: things are looking up for kent! and i promise you that this time, they actually are. therapy was always going to be a false start, but bob zimmermann is a Positive Force In Kent’s Life and will remain so.


	10. B4: reputation

On the plane to Edmonton, Troy slides into the seat next to Kent. 

“What are you listening to?” he asks, tugging one of Kent’s earbuds out. Kent elbows him.

“Barstool,” he says, stashing his phone under his thigh before Troy can see the Ariana Grande album cover on his screen. “Wouldn’t it be fucked up if we joined their big pond hockey tournament? Just, like, paid, showed up, and then tore it up?”

Troy laughs. “You think you’d stand a chance against a bunch of guys like that? Some forty-something Ontario hockey dads? I don’t know if you look at Twitter after we lose a game, but they seem to think they could do your job a hell of a lot better than you can.”

Kent grins. “Listen, man, if they wanna do my job, they can go right ahead. It’s been years since I’ve been able to fucking sit back and just enjoy a hockey game.” He slides the window cover up and peers down at what he thinks might be Montana. “I could get drunk in the stands and yell _shoot_ whenever they get, you know, thirty feet from the goal—”

Troy laughs. “Cut them some slack, man, how else are we supposed to know what to do?”

Kent shakes his head, grinning. “Fuck off, Swoops.” He slides the window cover back down and settles against the back of the seat a little more comfortably. “You’re the one they’re talking to, you know. You ought to listen once in a while.”

\--

Troy doesn’t end up scoring that night, but Kent does. He nets three truly slick shots: a maddeningly-casual tap-in, a quick and reflexive wraparound, and a showy slap shot with two minutes left on the clock. It’s his first hat trick this season, and it feels _good._

Edmonton’s night life is nothing like Vegas’s, but the team makes do. Kent tucks up in his hotel bed just shy of three o’clock in the morning, but he doesn’t actually get much sleep until they’re on the plane to Calgary.

Even then, it’s not a long flight, so Kent only manages to doze off for about half an hour. Just before they land, Kent catches up on the SportsNet podcast, curious about whether or not they have his interview with Bob from yesterday already edited for the show.

They do, and it sounds good. Kent has never had a problem with media appearances, even in the face of exhaustion or emotion. He’s a funny guy; he can joke around with anyone and still draw just enough attention to the things that the PR team cares about. He gets asked to do television spots (and radio spots, and press conferences, and advertisements, and just about everything else) because he has a unique talent for preventing the conversation from becoming stale and predictable. 

When Kent was younger, he would always wonder why reporters even bothered interviewing players at all; he had figured that everyone had heard enough about _getting pucks in the net_ and _playing a two-hundred-foot game_ and _sharing this experience with a great group of guys_ to last them a lifetime. Now that he’s on the other side of a series of NHL public relations media trainings, Kent understands the _why_ of it all, but he still chooses to project authenticity wherever possible.

It’s not always actually authentic, of course. In fact, it almost never is. What’s important is that people think it is, and Kent’s patented media smile ensures that.

\--

“So, tell me,” Bob says, midway through the podcast interview. “You’re about to play Edmonton, and tomorrow it’s Calgary. Is it good to be back up north in the middle of a good Canadian winter?”

Kent laughs. “Yeah, I always miss the snow when I’m in the desert,” he says. “But it’s a different kind of nice down there. I don’t have to put chains on my car to get to the rink like I did back in the Q.” He makes sure to keep his tone positive when he talks about Vegas; he doesn’t love it there, but he also doesn’t need to start more rumors about him being ungrateful, or worse, that he's trade-shopping.

“Well, you know, it’s hard to talk about location without mentioning your upcoming status as a free agent,” says Bob, rendering Kent’s trade-rumors sidestep entirely useless. “I’m curious about your long-term goals and where Vegas fits in.”

“Yeah, I think we’re a really strong team right now,” says Kent, employing the canned answer that he has used on every reporter since what feels like the beginning of time. It’s a far cry from _I want to retire as an Ace,_ but his agent will just have to needle him on that later. “I feel lucky to be on a team that has created and maintained such a strong presence in the league over the last few years. We’re looking great this season, and we’re trying our best to get to the playoffs.”

Bob grins, recognizing the ambiguity in Kent’s answer. “Right, of course.”

“As for goals, I think you know exactly what’s on my mind,” Kent says, bringing the conversation back around to his comfort zone. “Every player in the league will tell you that they want a Cup win, and that's what I'm working towards, too. I just want to play good hockey, keep improving myself, you know how it is.” He laughs. “You’ve been there, you’ve gotten a few Cups yourself.”

Bob laughs. “Many years ago,” he says. “Many, many years ago. I think all of these young guys now could outskate me without, you know, breaking a sweat.”

“No way,” says Kent, grinning. “No one could outdo the legend right here.”

“I look forward to seeing you try,” says Bob. “And we’ll cover it all right here on SportsNet. Thank you so much, Kent, for taking time before the game to chat.” 

“Sure thing,” Kent says, just before the podcast cuts to a Pure Hockey ad.

\--

The truth is, Kent _is_ eyeing other teams. He’s starting to get antsy as his current contract comes to a close, as it becomes obvious to him just how much he has been compartmentalizing his issues with Vegas. He had tried to be diplomatic in his response to Bob’s question, but what he had left unsaid was that there are several Cup-contending teams that he’d rather be on, in places that actually have seasons, with players that might want him around. It’s a tantalizing thought, and Kent’s been savoring the forbidden taste of it, like when he used to suck on throat lozenges when he wasn’t even sick, just because he liked the comfort it brought him to roll them around on his tongue.

Kent has worked hard over the last five years to build up his statistics to a point where he’d be a great acquisition anywhere, at (almost) any price. It hadn’t always been a conscious choice to make himself so marketable; he had just wanted to be the best, to beat his own records, to push himself harder and further and _more._

But, now that Kent is starting to feel suffocated by more than just the Vegas heat, it’s a convenient reality. 

As it stands, he _is_ the best; he _has_ beaten his personal records over and over, and he’s on track to do it again with his current point streak; he _has_ worked harder than ever this year. For someone with an insatiable drive like Kent's, it’s starting to feel repetitive and pointless. He’s the captain; he’s won the Cup and the Calder and a few other awards besides; he’s the top record-holder in the (short) history of the team; he’s the first-line forward, for whom upward mobility no longer exists because he is already as far up as he can go.

He doesn’t want to just compete against himself forever. He wants to play with fire; he wants to crash, burn, rebuild. Maybe it’s self-sabotage to leave a successful team at the top of his game, but Kent can’t think of anything about his current situation that’s worth saving, that couldn’t be re-won. All he really _needs_ is the ice time and the paycheck; everything else is something he’d love to scratch and replace.

\--

In the second half of the podcast, Bob reviews the highlights of the Edmonton game with the kind of animated zest that Kent remembers fondly from breakfast-table hockey talk at the Zimmermanns’ house. He’s been trying to find a reason to text him ever since they left the restaurant in Edmonton, so he pulls his phone out of his pocket.

_listened to the podcast. thanks for being a fan._

Bob replies within a few minutes. _Hahaha, of course… fly up and let me chat to you on TV next time !_

Kent is always in the market for a friendly visit and a good bargain. _comp my ticket and i’m in._

By the time Bob texts back, Kent is in line at a Subway in Calgary. _Thumbs up._

At first, Kent almost can’t believe that Bob had actually typed out the phrase _thumbs up_ instead of just sending an emoji, but, at the same time, it’s so technophobic that Kent can’t help but read it as familiarly and endearingly Jack-like. It makes him grin so genuinely that he almost forgets where he is until the Subway sandwich artist says, “Anything else, sir?”

“Banana peppers,” says Kent. “And spinach. Thanks.”

The guy nods. Once Kent’s sandwich is packaged up, Kent hands his card over.

“Wait,” says the guy ringing him up. “Your card — are you actually Kent Parson? Like, from Vegas?”

Kent smiles, easy. “Yeah, I’m just killing time before six,” he says. “You going to the game tonight?”

“Uh,” says the guy, looking a little embarrassed. “The games are pretty expensive here, so—”

“When do you clock out?” Kent asks. “If you don’t have a ticket, I can get you one. I won’t even be offended if you cheer for Calgary.”

“Holy shit,” he says. “I’m done here at one-thirty, but if it’s a lot of trouble or something—”

“No sweat,” Kent says. “I always have a ton of family tickets that I can’t use on roadies. Write your name and number down and I’ll pass it over to the staff. You got a girlfriend or anything you wanna bring with you?”

“Yeah, I—”

“Dope,” Kent says. He signs both copies of his receipt, as part of his ongoing quest to create the strangest possible eBay listings for authentic Kent Parson autographs. “I’m trusting you not to tell everybody what my Subway order is, man. It’s the secret to my success.”

“Swear to God,” says the guy, grinning.

“You’re a real one,” says Kent. “Here, let’s take a picture, but give me your hat and we’ll pretend like I’m ringing you up.”

\--

Somehow, Kent’s already-questionable public reputation has only gotten worse over the course of his career.

The resentment that his team feels for him is only amplified in the league at large. The press is staffed almost entirely, as far as Kent can tell, by people from the old guard who think that Kent purposely kicked Jack’s legacy out from under him in a selfish display of sabotage, leaving Jack to hang. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but no one seems to care. That was Bob Zimmermann’s boy, and he deserved what Kent got. That meant that, before he ever got a chance to define himself, his label was set in stone: Kent Parson, the antagonist.

He’s growing into it, somewhat. 

What that means in practice is that, while he isn’t exactly the person that the media loves to hate, he has certainly earned some of the more specific criticisms. He knows that the Aces — largely because of him — are known for their aggressively-offensive play style, and that some onlookers find it distasteful. Given the chance, he might challenge them on semantics (drawing penalties is not what Kent would call “playing dirty”), but he knows when to call a spade a spade.

And he’s been a spade for five years now. He has the jersey to prove it.

\--

Once he’s back home, Kent resolves to make up his mind about asking for a trade.

He has a few months left, and he wouldn’t be able to move until the season was over anyway, but it would give him the boost he might need to grit his teeth through one last, grueling playoff run with the Aces, to snag the Cup one more time before moving on, to make his last season in Vegas count.

He might burn a few bridges, though, and Kent tries to find it within himself to care about the potential repercussions of a move like that. For the pros-and-cons list that he’s making in his head, Kent tallies up a few more positives about Vegas: he’s established; he wouldn’t have to re-learn hundreds of specific plays; he wouldn’t have to alter his play style to fit another team’s goals. He’d be dealing with the devil he knows rather than the one he doesn't; he cannot, of course, guarantee that any other team in the league would be better for him than this one.

But he would be able to shed his bad reputation, perhaps, and find a reason to become a team player. He could get on friendly terms with a few of the guys, have people to grill out with, share a case of beer with. He could set challenging, exciting goals; he could make history on a team _with_ history instead of this blank-slate sandbox of an expansion he’s on now.

The Aces management would lose their minds if Kent ever expressed interest in a trade, but, in Kent’s mind, their job is to _manage,_ even (and perhaps especially) in undesirable situations. His job is to play hockey, and he can do that anywhere. What the Aces would do in his absence ceases to be his problem the very second he hangs up his jersey for the last time.

Kent’s ultimate goal is still Montreal, but he won’t do it without Jack. It would be treasonous.

He’d go just about anywhere else northeast of Vegas, though. It’s true: he _does_ miss the snow.

He decides to talk to his agent.

\--

Now that the league is ramping up for the playoffs, Kent finds himself in front of many more cameras, fielding many more questions, than he had in the fall. He likes this part of the job. It’s social, it’s fun, and it gives him a chance to let his personality show through, particularly if he’s doing something like Paul Bissonnette’s _What’s In The Box_ show or a _Hot Ones_ interview. Kent is, admittedly, somewhat vain; he likes seeing himself on television, and he likes hearing himself talk. And, in the case of _Hot Ones,_ he'll do just about anything for free wings.

Despite his less-than-stellar reputation, Kent likes to think that he’s a pretty good guy. He has always been charismatic, gregarious, talkative; he can certainly be quick-tempered, but, at the end of the day, Kent just wants to joke around with people and play hockey. He can’t imagine why PR gets so exasperated with him.

\--

“What would you say has been the best moment of your career so far?” the NBCSN reporter asks, phoning it in with another softball.

“Hitting five million followers on TikTok,” Kent says, deadpan.

\--

Well, maybe that’s why.

\--

Kent’s feeling so good after talking to Bob and nailing several successive media appearances that he forgoes therapy again in favor of marathoning Jackie Chan movies in his home theater. Purrs joins him, and she even tolerates his play-by-play commentary. They were made for each other, really.

As the third set of credits roll, Kent wonders if Bob ever actually told Jack that Kent had said hello. He doubts it, but it’s still as nice of a thought as it had been days ago. He lets it linger; the levity in his heart feels nice. He hopes it stays with him all night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TIMELINE NOTE: the way i rationalize the tiktok line (since tiktok wasn't a thing in the era that canon is set in) is that i was GOING to have it be vine, which would be more timeline-appropriate, but vine doesn't have the same energy that tiktok does (shock comedy and skits vs. dances and challenges), and i think kent is MUCH more suited to the latter. therefore, in my mind, i've swapped the tiktok era and the vine era in history - so vine hasn't happened yet, lol. ty to CoconutClouds for asking about this!!
> 
> \--
> 
> this one was super hard for me to write for some reason so i apologize if it seems weird and disjointed. 
> 
> what i want to get across here is that kent's "public" reputation and his "private" reality are very different, but informed by each other. he's not all good, but he's not all bad, either. in the canon, kent is obviously the antagonist because bitty is the narrator, and he sees kent as the sum total of the epikegster shitshow and a past that jack won't talk honestly about. that makes sense for bitty, but it obviously doesn't give us a ton of credible insight on who kent is as a person.
> 
> shitty and jack do some work to realign that narrative with reality (the conversation with bitty where shitty says that kent's actually a pretty cool guy, and that jack has also been known to get weird and hostile whenever kent is around or brought up, proving that it's both of them that are handling things poorly and not just kent; jack saying "we both owe each other a lot of apologies" and, in the same/similar convo[s], calling him "kenny" before immediately revising to "parse" or "parson"), but these instances don't put any cracks in the dominant narrative (and it shouldn't have! it's not realistic for bitty to like kent after what he saw, and i think that's fine).
> 
> anyway, long story short, kent is fucking up and jack is fucking up but they are still both salvageable because they are people who want, in their own weird ways, to get better.


	11. B5: flashbacks

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, Kent,” says Dr. Fallman. 

“Yeah, well,” says Kent, getting comfortable on the couch. “I’m a busy guy.”

Dr. Fallman sits back in her chair and uncaps her pen. “I’m glad you’re here. Tell me, how’s your team doing?”

Kent grins. “We’re leading the league in scoring right now. You must not watch hockey, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“No, I don’t,” she admits. “But my son played for a few years.”

“Wait, that’s dope,” Kent says, sitting forward, suddenly interested. “Was he good?”

Dr. Fallman laughs. “A mother always thinks her son’s the best one on the team, right?”

Kent laughs and rubs his upper arm. “My mom never went to my games,” he says. “I don’t know that she’s ever seen me play.”

The expression on Dr. Fallman’s face almost makes Kent regret saying anything.

“I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me,” Kent says, quickly. “I just think you’re a good mom, that’s all I’m saying.”

Dr. Fallman looks slightly taken aback at the leap that Kent makes to get there. “Well, I appreciate that,” she says, in spite of herself.

\--

Kent, eight years old and hockey-obsessed, is waiting outside the Timothy J. Burvid Ice Rink in Buffalo, New York. It’s February, and it’s _cold._

He hasn’t had the greatest start to his Saturday. The sky is the sort of grey that promises several inches of freshly-fallen snow sometime around the midnight hours, and Kent had to get up at six o’clock in the morning to make it across town on the bus for his hockey game. To make it worse, his rec league team had just lost against one of the better youth hockey programs in Buffalo. That part, at least, had come as no surprise. Kent doesn’t really care about winning or losing as long as he gets to play, but he _is_ hoping that, one of these days, they’ll get a few Ws to their name.

“Hey,” he says, to one of the other boys leaving the rink. “Do you still want the Jagr card? I got one for you the other day. I’d only want, like, a dollar for it.”

The kid stops and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got a dollar,” he says. “Let me see the card first.”

Kent produces it from the pocket of his NASCAR [jacket](https://images.sidelineswap.com/production/005/556/143/4ce8640317e1746e_thumb.jpeg), a black-and-white bomber with M&Ms characters on it. “Here,” he says, turning the card over so the kid can see both sides. “It’s authentic, I swear. It’s from the new series.”

The kid looks it over. “Deal,” he says, and hands Kent a crumpled dollar bill. Kent hands the card over and smooths the bill out, folds it, tucks it in his pocket where the card had been.

“Thanks,” says Kent. “Let me know if you want anything else. I can find any card you need, you’ll just have to give me a few days sometimes.”

The kid nods. “Thanks. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Hey, wait,” says Kent. “Is your mom picking you up?”

The kid glances over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he says. “I think so.”

Kent chews his lip. “Do you think she’d give me a ride home?”

“We’ve gotta pick up my sister from piano,” he says, looking at Kent with guarded eyes. “Sorry.” He jogs off through the parking lot towards his mother’s idling SUV, leaving Kent standing there, a little bit sad — but a dollar richer.

He waits around to see who else comes out of the front doors; he’s not sure if he really knows any of the other boys well enough to ask their parents for a favor. He definitely wouldn’t call them friends, but he really needs to get home one way or another, and his parents probably aren’t even awake yet. 

He chews his split lip and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. He either needs to get a ride from someone or sell another card to afford the bus fare. Kent checks the inventory he has on him: Gretzky, Yzerman, Roy, Gretzky, Brodeur, Gretzky again. Nothing particularly rare this time around, but most kids will buy a Gretzky, so he always keeps a few in his pocket.

“Hey,” says a voice to his left. Kent looks up and around and, to his dismay, locks eyes with his arch-nemesis.

“Hey, Kaner,” he says, dully.

Patrick Kane is the cockiest kid in Buffalo hockey, and, unfortunately, he has the skill to back it up. More annoyingly, though, he loves to rub it in Kent’s face. He knows that Kent loves hockey more than anybody and works harder than everybody, so Patrick always makes it a point to one-up him when he can. 

“Nice fall at the end there,” he says, and Kent cringes at the memory: his skates had slid out from under him, somehow, and he had wiped out on the ice right in front of the goal. “Did your mom forget to pick you up again?”

“Shut up,” says Kent, harshly.

Patrick grins. “Don’t tell me to shut up, loser,” he says. “Hey, I was gonna ask you something.”

Kent narrows his eyes. “What?”

“You sell hockey cards, right?”

Kent raises his eyebrows, just a little. “Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Depends on the card,” Kent says, a little wary, but his hand finds the stack of cards in his pocket, just in case. “Usually a dollar or two.”

Patrick grins. “Okay, I wanna make a deal with you,” he says. 

Kent nods, hoping that this trade will get him out of the cold and onto the bus back home. “Cool, what’s the deal?”

“When I make it to the NHL and you’re still out here selling cards, promise me you’ll sell mine for five times as much as the others,” he says, and laughs. Then, he jogs off towards his parents’ car, too, like all of the other boys.

Kent feels his face burn hot, and he wills himself not to cry. “I hate you,” he yells at the car as it pulls away. “I _hate_ you, you stupid —” He kicks the greying heap of snow piled up by the curb, seeing red, and immediately regrets it; like everything else in this horrible city, it’s _freezing._ He sinks down onto the sidewalk, crouching so that the seat of his jeans doesn’t get wet. He cries.

When the soggy, slushy snow begins to seep deeper into his boots, Kent hoists his hockey bag over his shoulder and makes his way to the bus stop.

“Hey,” he says to the driver, the one who always covers Kent’s route to and from the rink. “I know I said I’d pay on the way back, but—”

“It’s all right,” says the driver, warmly. “I’ll get you home. Go find yourself a seat under the heater.” He’s driven Kent around for years; he knows that being short on bus fare is the least of Kent’s problems, and he doesn’t intend to guilt-trip an eight-year-old into paying up or standing out in the cold.

Kent nods and hoists the heavy bag up onto the luggage rack, stumbling a little when his center of balance is thrown off. He has always been a short kid, and his hockey bag is bigger than he is. “Thanks,” he says. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” the driver says. “Just promise me something.”

Kent, forcibly reminded of Patrick’s similar request from earlier, feels guilt pool in his belly. “Sure,” he says, ready to accept the terms of a bus fare debt repayment plan.

“When you make the NHL someday,” the driver says, “just make everybody proud.”

Kent blinks. He smiles a little, hugging himself as he warms up under the heater. “Okay,” he says. “Sounds good. I will.”

“You’re out here every day, seems like,” says the driver, pulling the bus out onto the road. “You work hard enough, you’re gonna be pretty good by the time you’re old enough.”

“I’m gonna be the best,” Kent says.

He had never doubted it, not even for a second.

\--

Back in Dr. Fallman’s office, Kent runs a hand through his hair. “I was right,” he says, after his story is done. “I _am_ the best. Like, not to sound like a dick, but it’s a fact.”

After considering him for a moment, Dr. Fallman puts her pen down. “We’re out of time for today,” she says, “but I’d like to pick this thread back up next time. Would that be okay with you?”

Kent nods. “I’ll try to get back here in two weeks.”

Dr. Fallman nods. “I’ll see you then, Kent.”

\--

On a one-to-ten scale of quasi-wholesome rags-to-riches narratives, with one being _the Blind Side_ and ten being _Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story,_ Kent’s somewhere around a four. 

He has always been a big believer in people’s ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and his unrelenting work ethic certainly put him on the track to get scouted for the Q. But, once Kent had made it to Quebec, Bob Zimmermann had been his very own Leigh Anne Tuohy. He had given him a place to stay, plenty of firm-but-gentle coaching, and enough confidence in his own abilities to fan the flames of his fledgling come-and-take-it attitude.

It’s no secret that Kent, as an unofficial graduate of the Bob Zimmermann School of Hockey, had been able to access things that other players his age couldn't. But Kent sees this reality as a rare occurrence of natural equity: he had nothing at all when he was growing up in Buffalo, so it only makes sense that he deserves _everything_ now. 

That perspective allows him to feel rounded out now, to feel like he belongs in a league previously run by rich kids and nepotists. Every time he snatches a record from one of them, it feels like a big _fuck-you_ to the people who hadn’t believed that he could do it, to the people who still don't treat him with the respect that he has earned five times over. 

There are people who say that Kent has become one of those silver-spoon boys by now, that he wouldn’t be where he is today if Bob hadn’t taken him under his wing, if he hadn’t been brought up alongside hockey’s crown prince in those highly-crucial years. 

Honestly, they may be right.

But, on a scale of one to ten where one is _beat them_ and ten is _join them_ , Kent’s an eleven: do both.

\--

The next day, the Aces play the Blackhawks at home. When Kent faces off against Patrick Kane, he wants to spit in his sneering face, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he incurs a tripping penalty. Kane collides with the ice face-first; his chin splits open, blood pooling on the ice below him. The referee calls it immediately, predictably, and Kent is sentenced to two minutes in the box. On his way there, he makes sure to skate by the Chicago bench, where Kane is leaning on the boards, gauze taped to his jaw. 

“Nice fall,” he says. “Hey, how much are your hockey cards worth these days, eh?”

\--

Then, after he joins him back on the ice, he beats him. 3-2, according to the announcer.

_Beat them. Join them. Beat them again._

The Aces goal siren has never sounded so much like a song. 

\--

His sense of unadulterated satisfaction is short-lived, though. The sports coverage the next day is exactly what Kent has come to expect. 

“I just don’t get Parson’s thinking here, Scott,” says some SportsCenter anchor. “There’s no payoff for a deliberate trip like that. All he did was force his team to pick up his slack and play shorthanded. There’s no dignity in a 5-on-4.”

“We’ve always seen Parson react like this when his team is lagging behind, Jared,” says Scott. “He’s an impulsive guy. That makes it hard to see him as a real team player. He just wanted to get revenge on Kane for scoring that second-period goal, and, well, instead of answering it with one of his own, he made it personal. He got the game-winner in the third, but that’s why he’s such a thorn in everyone’s side: he delivers, so he gets away with stuff that other players would get called out for.”

“That kind of selfish play will only get him so far,” says Jared. “He’s had five years in the league to get used to—”

Kent turns it off.

He doesn't need to listen to this.

\--

But no matter what they say about him, the media is never too sour on Kent to stop blowing up his phone with interview requests. Kent’s not sure if he should be irritated or smug, so he chooses to be both.

“We’re so glad you were able to come on the show today,” says Scott from yesterday’s broadcast, and Kent smiles thinly.

“Thanks for having me.”

Jared checks the reference sheet in front of him. “So, Parse, you’ve had quite the season so far,” he begins. Kent hates when too-friendly news anchors call him by his nickname. He smiles wider.

“Yeah, I’m pretty proud of what the team’s been able to accomplish.”

“As we move into the playoff season, what are your priorities to ensure that the Aces are positioned well?”

“We’re just trying to play the game our way,” says Kent. “We’d really like a repeat of last year’s bracket, but we’d be lucky to get that kind of a matchup again.”

Scott nods and shuffles his papers. “You’ve been known for your standout performance in high-pressure situations,” he says. “I don’t think anyone could forget your leadership in that nail-biter of a Game 7 a few years back—”

“Two goals, one Cup,” says Kent, and can’t help but grin at his own joke. Scott and Jared don’t get it, but Kent’s PR guy does.

He hears about it later, as per usual. But, as per usual, it goes in one ear and out the other.

\--

The next time he’s in Dr. Fallman’s office, Kent feels more pliant and more amicable than ever. He sometimes finds himself going from a poker-faced, aloof enigma to a gushing, vulnerable oversharer in a matter of seconds, based purely on his desire to _connect_ with someone in a real way. Sometimes it’s a bartender; sometimes it’s a car salesman; sometimes it's a free samples worker at Costco. Today, it’s a therapist.

“You were gonna ask me about my childhood,” says Kent, without preamble.

Dr. Fallman smiles. “Is that something you’re ready to talk about?” she asks, crossing her legs.

“I’m cool with it,” Kent says.

“Then I’d like to start simple,” she says. “What kind of relationship do you have with your family?”

Kent shrugs. “I don’t have one, really.” He sits forward, elbows on his knees. “The only person I still talk to is my sister, and we only text every couple of months. It’s super casual.”

“You don’t speak to your parents?”

“My dad’s dead,” says Kent, point-blank. “He died when I was sixteen. He was in the military, and he was overseas. Something happened, I don't know what.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Dr. Fallman. “That must have been so hard to go through at such a young age.”

Kent shrugs. “I always hated him,” he says. “He was pretty mean, and just — hard to live with. I always felt like — maybe I had done something wrong, like, before I could remember anything, that made him resent me like that, but I never figured out what it was.” He sits back and traces a pattern on his own thigh. “When he died, it was more weird than anything else. I don’t remember feeling sad or anything. I wasn’t even at home, I was playing hockey in Quebec at the time.”

Dr. Fallman nods, letting Kent say his piece before pressing for further context. “And your mother?”

Kent scrubs the side of his face. “She wasn’t around much,” he says. “Well, she was. She was around, but she wasn’t _there,_ you know?”

“How so?”

“She had problems,” Kent says, voice low. “She drank too much, and — it caught up to her after a while. She didn’t work or anything, so she’d just lay around in her room all day with the door closed. My sister and I hardly ever saw her. She was just depressed, I guess, and she’d only come out to make something to eat and then she’d go right back in again. My sister and I always kind of had to fend for ourselves. We’d, you know, buy food and stuff for ourselves with the assistance money, and walk to the bus together, and — I was the oldest, I was two years older than her, so it was easier for me to just make sure she was doing okay and everything. Once my dad was gone — it got worse, I think. I don’t know for sure how bad it got, just because I wasn’t there.” 

“Were you ever able to follow up?” asks Dr. Fallman, gently.

Kent shakes his head. “Once I left for Quebec, I didn’t ever go back. It was like my ticket out, you know? But my sister’s still there, and I think she checks up on her every now and then.” He pauses. “I’ve always felt bad about leaving Katie there, like, to take care of Mom and — deal with everything, all the bullshit. We had always been together, you know? Like, just the two of us. I basically raised her, and then I left. But I had to. I had to, or I would’ve fucking lost my mind.”

Dr. Fallman nods. “Are you familiar with the term ‘parentification’?” she asks, and Kent shakes his head again. “It can refer to the process through which the child becomes the adult in the household, so to speak. The caregiver, the decision-maker, the supportive pillar of the family for siblings to lean on. There are a few forms it can take, but it sounds like you had quite a lot on your shoulders.”

“Yeah,” says Kent. “I did. But, I mean, I had to do what I had to do, or we would’ve been a lot worse off.”

“Right,” says Dr. Fallman. “It sounds like you were an incredibly resilient child, and I’m sorry that you were placed in a position where you had to be resilient. That’s not fair.”

Kent shrugs. “Life isn’t fair,” he says. “I never expected it to be fair.”

\--

“Just sit in front of the mirror,” says Kent, eight years old, short and blustery. “We have to be on the bus in ten minutes.”

Katie, six years old, just as short and just as blustery as her brother, does as she’s told. Kent’s the only person she’ll listen to, including her teachers. _Especially_ her teachers. “Will you give me braids?”

Kent nods and gets to work, his small hands sectioning, looping, and tying off two wonky, uneven braids. He bites his lip. “It’ll look okay if you wear your beanie,” he says. “Go get it, it’s under the dresser, I think.”

Katie hops off the chair and comes back, a red hat tugged down over her bangs, leaving the two misshapen braids poking out the bottom. “I’m ready,” she says. “Are we gonna eat breakfast at school?”

“Yeah,” Kent says, snagging a stack of hockey cards off the dresser to sell at recess. They pull their boots on, grab their backpacks, and make their way to the bus stop, kicking snow at each other and laughing the whole way.

\--

“No, life often isn’t fair,” says Dr. Fallman, softly. “But there are lots of things we can do as people to make it fairer for each other. For ourselves.”

Kent nods, and thinks of Patrick Kane’s blood-streaked jaw. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess so.”

His Casio beeps.

He drives himself home.

\--

Once the dark has swept over the terracotta tiles outside, Kent lies on the couch, Purrs snoring softly on the armchair nearby. As he listens to the low hum of the mostly-muted television, Kent sifts through the day’s events in his mind, slow and beer-hazy.

He thinks about Katie, and the careful way he used to do her braids — slowly, with his tongue between his teeth. He thinks about how he used to do everything else for her, too, from getting her a McDonald’s Happy Meal on her birthday to teaching her how to shotgun a beer (when both of them should have been far too young to know about shotgunning beers at all). He _had_ parented her, in a way, but he had never thought of it like that until Dr. Fallman had suggested it. He had always just thought that he had tried (and failed, in some respects) to be a good older brother. It’s just that being a good older brother had meant something different for him than it had for other kids. 

For him, it had meant helping a five-year-old Katie brush her teeth, or teaching an eight-year-old Katie how to catch the city bus by herself. When Katie was ten-going-on-eleven, she had begged Kent to let her join the rec league field hockey team. Because he had dragged her to so many of his hockey games out of necessity, Kent, who was twelve-going-on-thirteen, wouldn’t have dreamed of saying no. He had begged his coach to bend the rules, to let him work in the Timothy J. Burvid Ice Rink’s second-hand hockey shop so that he could pay for Katie’s gear. The coach had obliged, and so began a long stretch of afternoons spent lounging on the counter at the back of the store.

The discount had ended up being good enough to warrant committing two whole years to sharpening people’s skates and fitting youth players’ helmets, even if the paycheck itself had been lousy. Even so, it had allowed Kent to afford their school clothes, Katie’s gear, a few trips to Taco Bell — and his own gear besides. 

He had only ended up turning his name badge in the night before he caught the Greyhound bus up to Montreal. Once his meager player salary from the QMJHL had started coming in, and once Jack had started buying most of his meals, he had sent as much money as he could back to his sister.

He had hoped, then, that it would be enough to cover the cost of both her gear and his absence.

Out of nowhere, his mind draws up Dr. Fallman’s words from their first meeting over a month ago.

_You’ve mentioned the idea of control._

_Do you feel like your current situation is out of your control?_

Kent turns that over in his mind, unfocused, intrigued.

_I can see how that would make you feel like you aren’t in control of what happens to you._

And then, all of a sudden, it clicks for him: he doesn’t want anyone to manage him because he’s never had the luxury of being managed before. His parents weren’t parents; he had to be the adult, or the good big brother, or the _parentified child._ He had gotten himself out of that situation, but then he had met Jack, his best and only friend. Kent had worried so much about this volatile, porcelain-skinned boy that it had felt like he had been constantly managing his words, his responses, their friendship as a whole. Once Jack had pushed him away, he had been forced to manage everything all on his own again, just like before. 

As unfair as it is, Kent’s life had always been this way. Managing his circumstances alone, however stressful or damaging or impossible, is all he has ever known.

How was he supposed to react when the team staff had shouted themselves hoarse over Kent’s missed practices, his frequent hangovers, his DUI? Was he supposed to shut up and comply when they had told him to stop drinking, to go to rehab, to show up to a therapist’s office twice a month? 

Kent rests a hand on his chest and blinks up at the ceiling in the dark.

 _I have to take the wheel back,_ he thinks. _I need to control my own life. I’m not a victim._

\--

The next morning, over a spinach-and-kiwi smoothie, Kent draws up a punch list: _call agent, fire therapist, talk to Jack._

_Somehow._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kent: oh sick, an epiphany  
> kent: draws entirely the wrong conclusion from it
> 
> friendship ended with therapy arc, now blind chaos is my best friend
> 
> also, ngozi has said that kent's character is based on buffalo native patrick kane (and jack is based on quebec native jonathan toews, kane's teammate and bromance-y best friend). but patrick kane is a real-life abuser and we HATE HIM!!!!!! so kent hates him too. end of justification
> 
> one more narrative backstory note: the qmjhl pays their players a weekly salary (16/17s - $35, 18s - $50, 19s - $60, overagers - $550 in past years but $150 now), which isn't much, but it gives them a little bit of pocket money to play with
> 
> oh and we hit 25k words! 1/4 of the way to my goal which is: six figures


	12. B6: taking control

“Hey, I gotta talk to you,” Kent says to Adrian Lindholm, his agent. “Like, a sit-down thing.”

There is a brief moment of quiet on the other end of the line, punctuated only by the sound of a few mouse clicks, as Adrian checks his calendar. “I can set up a meeting for Monday at three o’clock. Would that be timely enough?”

“Yeah,” says Kent. “Yeah, that would be great. And I want it to be just you and me, nobody from the team. If some NHLPA people have to be there, then that’s fine, but—”

“I can make that work,” says Adrian. “Are you planning on coming into the office, or would it be easier to conduct this over the phone?”

“I probably ought to come in,” Kent says, leaving Adrian suddenly apprehensive. 

“Is everything all right?” he asks, as lightly as he can.

“Yeah, I’m cool. I just wanted to talk about contract stuff since reporters keep riding my ass about it,” he says. That’s true, and it’s all that Adrian needs to know right now; Kent will tell him the whole story later. “Thanks, man.”

“All right, text me if you need anything between now and then,” Adrian says. “I’ll see you on Monday afternoon.”

“See you then,” says Kent, and hangs up.

\--

“Hey, I gotta talk to you,” Kent says to Dr. Anne Fallman, who takes spontaneous calls from her clients very seriously.

“Sure, Kent,” she says, sounding as calm as ever over the crackly line. “What can I help you with?”

“I’m not going to be coming in anymore,” he says, directly.

“Oh?” says Dr. Fallman, pausing for a beat. “Okay. I’d be curious to know what’s led you to—”

Kent leans forward on his kitchen island, running his free hand through his hair. “I made the decision to stop coming in,” he says. Kent has never had a problem with advocating for himself, with defining his boundaries in professional spheres. “But — I appreciate everything you said, and — I was thinking, like, if your son ever wanted to come out for a private skate, I’d be down.”

Dr. Fallman, now able to separate her opinion of Kent Parson from a clinical context, lets herself feel charmed by his offer. “I’ll let him know. Best of luck, Kent, and please don’t hesitate to reach out in the future.”

\--

“Hey, I gotta talk to you,” Kent says to Jack, or, at least, Jack’s voicemail. “For real. Call me when you can.” _Click._

He knows it’s optimistic beyond belief to expect that Jack would return his call this time when he hasn’t done so any of the other times that Kent has left him (rambling, pathetic, drunken) messages, but he feels lucky today.

\--

Things are looking up.

\--

After practice on Monday, Kent stops by Raising Cane’s. He orders a Caniac Combo to take with him into Adrian’s office; chicken is on his meal plan, so he technically wouldn’t have to report it to his nutritionist as a violation. Besides, having to hear the chicken puns is punishment enough.

In these small ways, Kent is taking the management of his life into his own hands.

“Let me get some extra sauce, too,” says Kent, arm out the window of his car. “And a large Sprite.”

“You got it,” says the woman ringing him up.

When Kent pulls into the agency’s parking lot, Adrian is waiting outside for him. They mirror each other’s waves.

“Practice went well this morning?” Adrian says, shaking Kent’s hand firmly as they approach each other. 

Kent shakes back, grinning. “Yeah, we all ran ourselves pretty ragged.”

Adrian grins. “Glad to hear it. My wife and I are going to the game tonight, so we’ll be looking out for you.”

Kent laughs. “Won’t be hard to spot me.” He holds the door open for Adrian as they head inside. “I’ll be the one scoring.”

They settle into a small conference room down the hall from Adrian’s office, and a few representatives from the NHLPA join them in their capacity as salary consultants. An aide brings them each a bottle of water, an agency-branded mug, and a blank notepad with a pen attached. 

“So, Kent,” Adrian begins, shuffling a few pieces of paper on the table in front of him. “When we spoke on the phone last week, you seemed interested in talking through the potential for contract changes once you hit free agency. I’ve invited a few of our financial guys to sit in and provide guidance as needed, but I want you to know that you’re free to discuss your goals without it getting back to your team’s upper management.”

“Yeah, so,” says Kent. “Honestly, I don’t care about the money.”

Adrian sits back in his chair, surprised, and casts an apologetic glance at the NHLPA suits. “All right. What is it about your contract that you’re curious about?”

“I want to request a trade,” Kent says.

Adrian looks, to his credit, as calm as anyone could when confronted with a statement of that magnitude from a player of Kent’s prominence. “I’m surprised to hear you say that,” he says, as mildly as possible.

Kent sits back in his chair and shrugs, deftly twirling an agency-branded pen between his fingers. He will not be dragged into another therapy session of sorts, where professionally-dressed people attempt to pry personal information out of him while he tries to avoid backing himself against a wall. “I just want to talk about options. I want to know who needs a guy like me, who’s got a decent amount of cap space, that kind of thing. I know you probably can’t give me answers right away, but — I can tell you what I’m looking for, if that would help you pull together some possibilities.”

Just like his phone call with Dr. Fallman this morning, this meeting is all about Kent making firm and reasonable demands, drawing boundaries, and staying clear-headed in pursuit of a particular outcome. He’s good at this, and it has served him well so far in his career; he really needs the years of experience he has in this kind of thing to pull through for him now.

Adrian nods, slow, and glances at the others in the room one more time. “Great,” he says. “I’d be happy to help you draw up what you’re looking for. What would you say are your current priorities?”

Kent puts the pen down, lining it up against the side of his notepad. “I’m mainly interested in the Original Six teams, but mostly I just want an organization with a lot of history. Like I said, I don’t really give a shit about the paycheck, but I don’t want to undersell myself so much that I couldn’t ever work my way back up to true market value if I ever wanted to make another move in the future. I’d be happy to take a small cut if it meant finding the right fit, but I’m playing for eight million a year right now and I’m not trying to go below six.”

Adrian nods. “What’s important to you in terms of team dynamics?”

Kent sits back in the chair again, folding his hands over his stomach. “Ice time is really important to me, like, I want to be able to make an impact right from the jump. I know I’ll have to do my time or whatever, get to know how everything works at a different organization, but I’m not interested in being somebody’s fourth-line winger. I’d want to carry over a lot of what I’ve built up, what I’ve proven that I can do, but the most important thing is being in a supportive locker room.”

“If you’re interested in the Original Six teams, that’s the Rangers, Red Wings, Bruins, Canadiens, Blackhawks, and Maple Leafs,” Adrian says, more to himself than to Kent; he’s busy sketching out a chart on his notepad. “Are there any of those, for any reason, that you wouldn’t want to entertain offers from?”

“Bruins and Leafs,” he says, thinking immediately of Jack’s distaste for the teams that had long been rivals of his hometown team, his greatest passion, les Canadiens de Montréal. “Rangers, because I don’t want to live in New York ever again in my life. And — I think I mentioned this when we first started working together, but I’m holding out for the Habs in the long term still, so I’d prefer not to bring them into the conversation until a few other things fall into place.” _Until Jack signs with a team, until we work things out, until we can get ourselves back on track for our dream._

“Right, I remember that,” says Adrian, making a note in the margin of his notepad. “Any other teams you’d like to bring into the mix, or any that you’d like to exclude as a hard no?”

“I’m not going to New York,” says Kent, pointedly. “And I’d like to make a move to the Eastern Conference, if I can, but I’m not, like, married to the idea.”

Adrian laughs and adds _Islanders, Sabres_ to his “no” list. “Canada? United States?”

Kent shrugs. “Either one. I just want a good organization, you know, that ticks the right boxes.”

“You’re very specific,” says Adrian, grinning, because he has worked with Kent long enough to know that he is as picky as he is diplomatic.

“Yeah, well,” says Kent. “Do you wanna talk about salary range options, since the guys are here?”

“Let’s get started,” says Adrian, and folds the page of his notepad back to reveal a clean slate.

\--

Kent squeezes a dime-sized dollop of hair pomade into his palm and combs it through his fringe with his fingers. He gives his hands a quick rinse, drapes his watch over his wrist, and fastens it tight.

In front of the closet mirror, Kent shrugs a navy suit jacket over his shoulders and adjusts his tie, lifting his chin. He does a double-take and steps forward quickly to confirm that he had not, in fact, missed a spot when shaving. Purrs weaves around the shoe racks against the walls, making her way towards Kent’s freshly-ironed trousers. Kent sidesteps her deftly, grabbing a pair of cognac dress shoes on his way out the door. 

He laces them up on the stairs, stands, and brushes himself off.

His mindset is exactly where it needs to be for the uphill battle that is today’s game; they’re playing Toronto, and they always give the Aces a run for their money. 

He grabs the keys to his orange Lamborghini and heads out to the garage. Once he’s on the road, he queues up Bob’s latest podcast episode.

\--

 _“Ouais, and you know, my boy Jack is playing NCAA in the States, he’s doing some incredible work out there for Samwell_ _—”_

_“I bet he wishes he could suit up for the big leagues, eh?”_

_“Sure, sure, but his time will come. Besides, he’s making quite a home for himself there, he has this beautiful girlfriend, Camilla, a tennis player, I think. You’d never want to be anywhere else with a girl like that by your side, non?”_

Kent almost crashes his fucking car.

\--

It takes Kent five frantic minutes of Googling on his phone in the parking lot to find out that Jack is (allegedly) dating an international tennis star named Camilla Collins. There are pictures of her all over the internet; she’s petite, blonde, athletic, and — Bob was right — objectively beautiful.

Exactly Jack’s type.

Game, set, match.

\--

Kent walks into the rink feeling like he’s going to crawl out of his skin, or throw up, or both. He knows he has to refocus before he skates out for warm-ups, but it’s not easy; these are old feelings that he has never had a chance to deal with, and he should have guessed that they would burst up from their burial place somewhere deep in his heart. He remembers this jealousy from _before,_ when Kent was a (secret) lover scorned, when Jack, new to the trappings of adolescence and excitable hormones, had kissed girls at parties, in dark movie theaters, at prom. He knows that Jack hadn’t meant to hurt him then, and that he definitely isn’t thinking about how Kent feels right now, but Kent can’t help but dwell on the fact that it _had_ hurt, and it _does_ hurt, even though it’s irrational.

But he can’t think about that now. He has to focus on wins, not losses. Kent needs to channel this energy out of him _somehow._

He takes it out on their pre-game drylands first. During a game of hot potato, he hefts the medicine ball into Troy’s arms a little more forcefully than necessary, and when Scraps sends it his way before he’s ready, he cusses him out, cradling the ball to his chest. During their soccer warmup, Kent sends the ball soaring up into the rafters with a too-powerful kick. He does his best to look unconcerned and blameless when it gets lodged in a crevice far above their heads.

Then, he takes it out on the Leafs. He burns through shifts like he’s running on jet fuel; every time Coach O touches his shoulder, Kent flies over the boards like a homing missile, closing in on those white-and-blue jerseys. He snags a third-period goal and backs it up with an assist. He steps off the ice with his point streak still holding strong.

Whatever good that a stable, healthy mindset does for his gameplay, a rush of suppressed anguish and misplaced jealousy does him one better.

\--

Coach O holds Kent back after practice on Thursday. “The staff wants to find a time to talk to you about your contract,” he says. “I want to see you back out here in the fall, so let’s get you situated, eh?”

“Oh,” says Kent. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you guys about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS KENT'S NEW TEAM IN THE COMMENTS
> 
> based on my years of NHL-watching experience and exactly 0 further research, i'm thinking that kent would be a restricted free agent at the end of his current contract, since his history is (presumably): signing a ~3-year entry-level contract as a rookie and then re-signing with the Aces for another two years, leaving him open to move if teams made offers and he accepted (i'm imagining that he wouldn't have signed a contract with a no-move clause). if someone happens to know a lot about how hockey contracts work, hit me up. 
> 
> believe it or not, this is ANOTHER positive direction for kent to be going in! he hates vegas! he may not be making all the right decisions when it comes to the details, but he's still holding true to his gradual upward swing.
> 
> if you read between the lines, you'll pick up on me begging y'all to be patient with my long-windedness as i take kent on the rickety-est ride towards happiness possible. :)


	13. C1: breaking news

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
> 
> -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You’re joking,” says Coach O. “You’re fucking joking.”

“I mean, I haven’t made any moves yet,” says Kent, and then backtracks. “Well, actually, I talked to my agent on Tuesday.”

“You’re _joking,_ ” says Coach O, louder this time.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Kent says, attempting a joke, but it doesn’t land. If anything, it burns to a crisp high up in the atmosphere and falls to the ground as pathetic, useless ashes.

Coach O sits back in his chair and surveys Kent with what he assumes is a sense of poorly-tempered rage. The desk separating them is littered with news briefs featuring Kent’s name in the headline, coaching plans with Kent at the helm, and a slew of papers concerning team standings, Stanley Cup projections, potential draft picks - all drawn up assuming that Kent would continue to perform, to lead, to _stay._

“It’s not like it changes anything about this season,” says Kent, perhaps unhelpfully. “I wouldn’t go anywhere until after the playoffs anyway. I don’t want to be, like, a sitting duck for the postseason.” Quickly, he adds: “And I want to make good on all of our hard work so far this season. I really want to see this team do well—”

“Zip it,” says Coach O. “I don’t give a shit about why this is happening. I just want to know what the fuck we’re going to do about it. Tell me right now what the plan is.” He looks like he has aged a thousand years in the last ten minutes. “Lay it out for me, Parser.”

Kent considers him for a moment, thankful that he isn’t being asked to explain himself, that he doesn’t have to be put in the position of deciding how honest he wants to be. “I talked to Adrian on Tuesday,” Kent begins, calm and factual. “I told him what I was looking for. He’s going to crunch some numbers, I guess, and lay out what the possibilities are. I don’t have a follow-up meeting or anything scheduled yet, but I can let you know when I do.”

“That’s your business,” says Coach O, and sighs, looking defeated. “Give me a timeline.”

“I’d want to move over the summer,” says Kent. “So that I could be there for training camp. I don’t want to screw you over mid-season, and I don’t want to blindside anybody where it really counts.”

Coach O nods. “I appreciate that,” he says, a little forced, and he leans back in his chair. “Okay. I just have to ask, I mean, I understand that players move all the time, sometimes for reasons, sometimes for no reason. I get that. But — we were all assuming we’d have you for a while, Parse.” He meets Kent’s neutral gaze. “Maybe we were just wrong. I guess it doesn’t matter now, but I can't help but wonder what's going on.”

Kent does his best to maintain his measured tone. “It’s not personal,” he says. “This team gave me so much, gave me the opportunity to be the kind of player that I dreamed of being when I was a kid.” He pauses; that’s true, and it strikes him, momentarily. “The success I’ve had here is the only thing that’s allowing me to make this kind of move in the first place, to ask for a trade on my terms, and I chose to do it in a way that doesn’t leave you scrambling more than it has to." He hesitates. "I hope you can see that.”

Coach O nods, and Kent can see that he’s coming around to the logic of it all. “I know, I know,” he says. “And I meant it when I said that I appreciate the heads up. I just — this is hard, Parson,” he says. “We’ve built this team around you. And that’s not to say that the other guys aren’t incredible, stand-out players. They are, and they’ll be fine, we’ll rebound just fine. But you and I both know you’re something special.”

Kent smiles, just a little. “Honestly, they’ll probably be relieved to see me go,” he says. “They hate the playlists I put on during morning skate.”

Coach O chuckles, in spite of himself. “I’ve had you in this office a lot over the years, Parser,” he says, partly nostalgic and partly chastising. “We’ve worked through a lot.”

Kent knows that he’s thinking about his rookie year, when Coach O invited him to his office on one of the first days after Kent had moved to Vegas. He had offered to have Kent come to his family’s house for dinner, to help orient this young kid in his new life, a demanding organization, a city of sin. He must have seen, then, how broken Kent was in the aftermath of Jack’s overdose, even if Kent had never said Jack’s name. Everyone knew. How could they not?

But Coach O had never gone easy on him because of that, or because of anything else. If anything, he’d held Kent to a higher standard than the others, which made sense in Kent’s mind, because Kent knew that he could perform to a higher degree than the others. 

He had given Kent a hard time about his drinking, too, back when it had first started affecting his practices. 

“That’s where I draw the line,” he had growled at Kent, in this same office, over this same desk. “I’m not your fucking mother. I don’t give a shit what you do when you’re not out there on the ice, that’s for the rest of the staff to ride your ass about. But the second that your shitty choices start fucking up my game, that’s where I step in.” 

Kent, small and scared and hurt, had wanted to lash out, to deny it all, to defend himself, but instead, he had just said, “Okay,” and then, a month later, crashed his car into a light pole. The meeting that took place directly after that mishap was the first time that Kent had ever seen Coach O look worried.

Now, he looks worried again, but for a new, tamer reason. “I really hate to see you go, Parse,” he says. “I hate to think that you’re not happy here.”

Kent tilts his head a little in surprise; he has made a point to stay on a strict course of messaging, one that doesn’t involve how absolutely, desperately miserable he is in Vegas. He hopes that it isn’t _that_ obvious. “If this was only about my happiness,” Kent says, carefully, “then I would’ve made a different decision.” 

From Coach O’s expression, his nod, Kent assumes that he has interpreted the statement to mean that Kent would have stayed forever if not for bigger, brighter career opportunities elsewhere.

What Kent _actually_ means, of course, is that if he had considered his happiness as a major decision-making factor at any point over the course of the last five years, he would be so far-flung from Vegas, this dry desert ground into which Kent’s most persistent trauma had twisted his poison root, that neither Coach O nor anyone else would be able to find him.

\--

If Coach O had been worrying that Kent’s morale (and, therefore, his performance) might suffer in advance of his trade request, Kent proves him wrong in the next game, and the next game, and the next. His point streak only breaks when he’s forced to sit out the last two periods of an otherwise-inconsequential game, his shoulder jostled hard by a misapplied check from one of the opposing team’s defensemen. It heals up in short order, though, and Kent hits the ice again at the beginning of March, just as the team is beginning to get specific about numbers.

“We’re in one of the less-competitive divisions, to put it frankly,” says Coach J, an assistant coach for the Aces, in a locker-room meeting after the team’s latest practice. “Most other teams are sitting somewhere in the 60-point range right now, and we’re thinking we can maintain a good five-point lead on them, give or take a few. But other divisions are lingering in the 70s or 80s, and we have to aim to hit somewhere in the 90s by the end of the regular season to stay competitive, to put us where we want to be in terms of matchups.”

Kent sits hunched over in his locker, furrowing his brow, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Troy to his left and Scraps to his right. His teammates. 

To their left, and to their right, are the rest of them: the men that Kent has spent five years bleeding, sweating, and crying alongside, burning up all their energy, their patience, their resolve, just for a chance to lift the Cup. They had gotten there, on each other’s backs, once. It had felt _so good._

Kent has never been close with his teammates off the ice, sure, but when they’re dressed for a game, that has never mattered, not really. This is still his team, the only grown-up world that he has ever known. The rec league was nothing like this; juniors was nothing like this. Kent grew up in those spaces, but he became an adult here, in this room, with these men. Here, he had built himself up into the manifestation of his greatest goal, his most daring dream: Kent Parson, the NHL star. Kent Parson, the record-breaker. 

Kent Parson, the antagonist.

Now, sitting in this room with them, simmering in the reality that he is the only one who knows that it will all soon be forever changed, Kent’s not sure how to react. He feels singularly committed to their ultimate goal, as usual, but also simultaneously like a traitor in their midst. 

It’s odd, and melancholy, and real, all at once.

\--

When they skate out for warmups the next night, Kent tosses a puck over the glass to a young boy holding a handmade #90 poster. His younger sister, her blonde hair tied back in two braids with an Aces beanie tugged over them, cries out in indignation at the inequity of it, trying and failing to wrestle the puck away from her brother. She reminds Kent so forcibly of his own sister when she was that young, with the braids and the beanie and the attitude, that it makes his chest hurt.

He raps his knuckles on the glass, points to her, tips his stick over the glass, and makes her whole year.

\--

They don’t win every game, but they win enough.

 _Las Vegas Aces top the Pacific Division ahead of playoffs,_ reads the NHL.com notification on Kent’s lock screen.

 _CLINCHED,_ says the graphic posted to the Las Vegas Aces Instagram.

“The Aces have secured their spot in the playoffs and are heading into the postseason at the top of their game, Jared,” says Scott on SportsCenter.

 _Je te dis merde ! We will be watching so make us proud !,_ says Bob Zimmermann in a text below a screenshot of the SportsNet homepage.

“Time to work your asses off,” says Coach O in the locker room that evening.

Kent feels unsettled and hopeful, guilty and grand. 

\--

“It looks like there are a few teams that could work for you right now, based on your specifications,” says Adrian over the phone. “I’ve got a list here, if you’d like to—”

“Yeah, hit me,” says Kent, through a mouthful of cereal. He always eats breakfast standing up behind his kitchen island, with Purrs winding between his ankles.

“Well, we’ve got the Blackhawks, the Red Wings, the Penguins, the Flyers, and the Devils,” says Adrian. “If you want to broaden that list a bit, we can always adjust our parameters.”

Kent crunches on his cereal for a moment as he grabs a grocery list notepad and jots down the team names in his chicken-scratch scrawl. “Lemme just think about these ones for now,” he says, after a minute. “Hawks, Wings, Pens, Flyers, and Devils, right?”

“Right,” Adrian confirms.

“Okay. Anything else I should know, any circumstantial shit?”

“Some are a little tighter on cap space than others, but I think, other than that, they should all be pretty reasonable,” says Adrian. “Is there anything else you want me to pull for you in the meantime?”

Kent thinks about that as he works on another bite of cereal. “Can you send me the specifics?”

“I’ve got a spreadsheet I could send to your email,” he says. “Is it still — uh, is it still bart_snipeson69@hotmail.com?”

“Yeah,” Kent says, cavalierly. “I’ll look out for it. Thanks, man.”

“Of course,” says Adrian. “Anytime.”

\--

_Hawks, Wings, Pens, Flyers, and Devils._

Kent tells himself that he’ll stare at the list and knock beers back until he either falls asleep or makes a decision about his order of preference.

Predictably, he falls asleep.

The list is still there the next day, taunting him with tantalizing promises of escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kent made that email account when he was a Teen and has not bothered to change it since lmao. it combines his three favorite things: the simpsons, hockey slang, and inappropriate jokes
> 
> i couldn’t find a way to translate the french part of bob’s text to kent in the actual narrative part of the fic, so i’ll just say it here: it’s a kind of semi-vulgar expression that means “good luck” but in the “break a leg” kind of way. it may be confusing to those english-speakers who know that merde means shit. i promise you, the rest of quebecois is exactly as strange as this. (also, there are some superstitions around saying “good luck” at all in quebec [and maybe france? idk] but here i think it’s fine)
> 
> to clarify kent’s decision-making process about his timeline for leaving: the nhl does have a “trade deadline”, but this really only means something to teams who are playoff contenders. if players are traded before the TD in february, they’re allowed to play with their new team in the postseason (playoff games). if they’re traded after the TD, they’re not - hence why kent doesn’t want to move immediately, since it would render him ineligible to play in the postseason for his new team. 
> 
> another note - this is (obviously) where things start straying from total canon compliance, which is really hard for me because canon compliance in fics is my earliest love. that said, right now, we’re in the spring of 2014, and we’re still on track for epikegster in december 2014. what happens between now and then is a matter of great mystery to y’all and a matter of great timeline-twisting to me. i’ve got a plan and i think it’ll be cute so just bear with me lol i meant it when i said slow burn!!!


	14. C2: playoffs

The postseason is a grueling experiment in resilience, stamina, and courage. Games are both faster and fiercer; in a regular season game, there is far less to lose, so players conserve their energy for plays that matter, for scoring chances, for the games ahead. A puck skidding down towards the red line ten or twenty feet ahead of the forwards, for example, would be abandoned in favor of an icing call. But, in the final stretches of the season, that same puck would be chased into the boards, battled for, sticks locked in a shuffling, scuffling impasse until the puck broke free to favor one side over the other. For Cup-contending teams, there is no wasted opportunity; there is no lost cause.

Kent defines himself by his ability to rise to any challenge. This one is, by far, the most exciting.

\--

_First Round_

_\--_

_Game 1: Los Angeles Kings @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 1, Kings 0_

\--

_Game 2: Los Angeles Kings @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 2, Kings 1_

\--

_Game 3: Las Vegas Aces @ Los Angeles Kings_

_Aces 3, Kings 2_

\--

_Game 4: Las Vegas Aces @ Los Angeles Kings_

_Aces 1, Kings 0_

_\--_

_Series: Aces 4, Kings 0_

_\--_

They sweep the first round in an incredible burst of adrenaline right out of the gate, making use of those tedious practices and seemingly-endless scrimmages. The energy in the locker room after Game 4 is so boisterous that the lingering reporters have trouble picking people off for post-game interviews.

Always thinking like a captain, Kent is almost too relieved to be celebratory; playing through a taxing, drawn-out series at the start of a playoff run is a stamina killer in the long run, and Kent is always playing the long game.

They only get a few days to get their breath back, to condition, to sleep; by Tuesday, they’re back on the ice for the second round.

_\--_

_Second Round_

_\--_

_Game 1: San Jose Sharks @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 7, Sharks 0_

_\--_

_Game 2: San Jose Sharks @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Sharks 4, Aces 3 (2OT)_

_\--_

_Game 3: Las Vegas Aces @ San Jose Sharks_

_Aces 4, Sharks 3 (OT)_

_\--_

_Game 4: Las Vegas Aces @ San Jose Sharks_

_Sharks 4, Aces 0_

_\--_

_Game 5: San Jose Sharks @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 5, Sharks 3_

_\--_

_Game 6: Las Vegas Aces @ San Jose Sharks_

_Aces 3, Sharks 0_

_\--_

_Series: Aces 4, Sharks 2_

_\--_

The Aces shake the Sharks out of the running comfortably, despite some initial back-and-forth series ties. Kent gets fairly bruised up after a bad check in Game 4, collecting a smattering of purple and black bruises that bloom up and around his ribcage. Minor injuries like these are a natural side effect of the amped-up, highly-physical play that epitomizes the playoffs.

He spends the better part of fifteen minutes inspecting his side once he’s back in the hotel room, pressing his ribs gingerly, stretching to either side, breathing deep, lifting his arms over his head, all to confirm that his movement has not been inhibited in any shape, form, or fashion. 

“Jesus Christ, if you’re worried about it, just go to the team doctor,” says Troy, scrolling through Instagram on his bed as Kent passes by the mirror and lifts his shirt again.

“No way,” says Kent. “It doesn’t hurt or anything, it just looks fucking gross.”

“It does look gross,” Troy admits, glancing up from his phone. “From over here it just kind of looks like you have a huge rib piece, though.”

Kent grins. “Maybe I should get one. What do you think would look good? I already have the—”

“Gangster Spongebob,” says Troy, without hesitation. 

Kent cracks up as he heads into the bathroom for a shower, pulling his shirt the rest of the way off and tossing it unceremoniously onto the floor by the mirror. “Just for that, you’re not picking the movie on the flight back tomorrow, man. And I can tell you already that it’s gonna be _Die Hard._ ”

_\--_

_Third Round_

_\--_

_Game 1: Las Vegas Aces @ Winnipeg Jets_

_Jets 4, Aces 2_

_\--_

_Game 2: Las Vegas Aces @ Winnipeg Jets_

_Aces 3, Jets 1_

_\--_

_Game 3: Winnipeg Jets @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 4, Jets 2_

_\--_

_Game 4: Winnipeg Jets @ Las Vegas Aces_

_Aces 3, Jets 2_

_\--_

_Game 5: Las Vegas Aces @ Winnipeg Jets_

_Aces 2, Jets 1_

_\--_

_Series: Aces 4, Jets 1_

_Western Conference Champions: Las Vegas Aces_

_\--_

Kent’s getting nervous now.

He has been in this position before, of course, in 2012. They had won it all, then, even with their backs against the wall in a scattered, frantic Game 7. Kent had pushed through the nerves, the low morale from entering the third period with nothing on the board, and scored two goals, tying and then winning the game with three minutes left on the clock. He had lifted the Cup above his head with shaking hands, almost disbelieving, but mostly overcome with the mind-splitting, vision-blacking bliss that only comes from being on top of the world. 

The idea that they might just do it again is almost too overwhelming to entertain in any real way.

But this time feels different, harder, stranger — perhaps just because Kent will never get another chance to prove himself in _this_ jersey, with _this_ team, in _this_ city. He isn’t sure why that knowledge twists him up like it does, since he made the decision entirely unaided and in his own best interest, but perhaps the act of leaving is always unpleasant, no matter how desperate (or mundane, or unavoidable) the circumstances may be.

_\--_

_Round Four: Stanley Cup Finals_

_\--_

_Game 1: Washington Capitals @ Las Vegas Aces_

“Scott, we’re here at T-Mobile Arena for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, it’s Las Vegas and Washington battling for the honor of lifting the Cup—”

“Got a shot on goal on the first wave of this first period power play, they send the puck back to Miller who SCORES — this puck goes directly in past Braden Holtby—”

“Nice move there by Bellemare — Parson is flying up the middle lane with the puck, he makes a blind shot through traffic and it’s grabbed and held by Holtby—”

“The puck is taken by Burakovsky of the Capitals, and Burakovsky drifts it on back — the shot deflects and he SCORES — it’s a tie game, he got a piece of it and it’s even—”

“Now here’s Oshie coming around the net — and he SCORES, it’s 2-1 Capitals — it’s on edge and he just chips it in, he actually kind of pool-cues it with his stick—”

“Karlsson with a shot that went wide, Karlsson back on it again, over to Parson and SCORE, right out in front—”

“It ricochets off the post and he SCORES — the first goal of the second period, from Smith — a loss of coverage in front of the net for Washington—”

“Vegas puts it to the back of the net again and again—”

“Sweeping on into an empty net — SCORE — Game 1 to the Las Vegas Aces—”

_Aces 6, Capitals 4_

_\--_

_Game 2: Washington Capitals @ Las Vegas Aces_

“It’s ninety-nine degrees in Las Vegas, Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the first one went to Vegas with a score of six to four—”

“Here’s a chance now for Oshie, it went off the backhand, went around the goaltender, and ended up wide—”

“Parson’s a tough guy to handle, he just slips right past the defenseman, lines up a shot and he SCORES—”

“It’s kicked back out by Holtby, taken in by Tuch, over to Parson, now to Troy, a great chance here and — just wide of the net—”

“And Vegas goes to work, fresh players on the ice, Marchessault and Smith slowed up by Carlson—”

“This comes to Orpik and SCORE—”

“Ovechkin scores on the pass across and we have a penalty coming up for the Aces, a cross-check has been signaled—”

“Backstrom screens Parson as he gets close to the goal but he sends it right over Holtby’s glove, SCORE—”

“Troy passes to Miller and Miller sends it over to Parson, Parson sends it back to Troy and he SCORES—”

“That’s the buzzer, and the Capitals have taken Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals—”

_Capitals 3, Aces 2_

_\--_

_Game 3: Las Vegas Aces @ Washington Capitals_

“The Stanley Cup Finals comes to Washington, D.C. with the series tied—”

“Stevenson to the outside, he shoots, he SCORES — NO GOAL — we’ve got goaltender interference here—”

“A drive by Parson is blocked by Eller, another shot by Troy, and it’s blocked by Oshie—”

“Miller’s shot hit the post — the Aces don’t seem to be able to generate anything here tonight—”

“Another rebound blocked and it comes back around and SCORE — it’s Ovechkin—”

“Parson keeps it alive, he’s watching the mad scramble—”

“Leading it three-oh, the Capitols have it made — that line’s been humming since the drop of the puck—”

“Orlov thinks he’s gonna shoot it, but, all of a sudden, Parson’s able to put it between his stick and his skate, and, all in one motion, he’s able to flick it into the back of the net—”

“What a disappointing game for Vegas and a real energizer for Washington—”

_Capitals 3, Aces 1_

_\--_

_Game 4: Las Vegas Aces @ Washington Capitals_

“Good evening from the nation’s capital, a city awash in red, two wins away from a long-awaited title—”

“Niskanen tails Parson down the ice, blocking his scoring chance—”

“It’s a wide-open net and the puck dings off the post—”

“Oshie gets one in — from his skate to his stick to the back of the net—”

“Great hand-eye coordination there by Parson, able to settle the puck down enough to get it up and over and he SCORES—”

“He feeds one to Wilson and he SCORES—”

“Great hustle off the face-off, the Capitals are making magic happen out there on the ice—”

“This was just an unbelievable showing from the Washington Capitals, the Aces are gonna head back to Vegas with their tails between their legs—”

_Capitals 6, Aces 2_

_\--_

_Game 5: Washington Capitals @ Las Vegas Aces_

“Washington needs one more victory after consecutive wins on home ice to etch its name in history, and we’re back in Vegas for what could be the final game of the season—”

“Miller heads back across for a shot and it’s blocked, right in front of the goal—”

“We have a first period with no goals, now onto the second—”

“Here’s Vrana heading up the wing, Vrana’s setting up, he SCORES, he goes top shelf over the glove of the goaltender—”

“Karlsson’s got it around to Marchessault, it’s given around now to Schmidt, he’s got a shot, he SCORES—”

“Ovechkin takes a penalty for tripping, and the Aces will gain an advantage on the power play—”

“It looks like the Aces aren’t giving up the fight just yet—”

“Here come Parson and Troy with a series of tape-to-tape passes down through the offensive zone, Troy lines it up, he SCORES—”

“After the coach’s challenge, it has been determined that there was no goaltender interference, we have a good goal—”

“It’s not over yet, these teams are headed back to Washington, D.C. for Game 6—”

_Aces 4, Capitals 3_

_\--_

_Game 6: Las Vegas Aces @ Washington Capitals_

“We are back in the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. for what promises to be a thrilling Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals—”

“If the Capitals win this one, it’s all over—”

“We’ve had a tie game for most of the first period now, and we’re going into the second still neck-and-neck—”

“Marchessault finds some space, gets a nice pass from Schmidt, and buries it, he SCORES—”

“Backstrom answers the Aces goal, bringing the game back on even ground—”

“And that’s the buzzer, we’re going into OT—”

“Parson is absolutely flying down the ice, look at the speed on that guy, he’s guarding the puck and — drags it up in front — trying to mess with Holtby’s head with those signature dekes—and he SCORES, he beats the goalie in overtime—”

“And with that incredible OT winner, the Aces force a Game 7 back on home ice—”

_Aces 5, Capitals 4 (OT)_

_\--_

In the locker room, before the end of everything, Kent throws up in a trash can.

Scraps is immediately at his side. “Parser, what’s—”

“Shut up,” says Kent, wiping his mouth with a sweaty towel, stomach still churning from nerves. “Don’t worry about it. We have to focus if we’re gonna win this.”

“We’re gonna win this,” Scraps says, firmly. “We are.”

Kent shoots him a look. “Get your gear on,” he says. “I give the pep talks around here. I just need to brush my teeth first.”

The men are all dressed for the game, black and white and red all over, once Kent’s mouth is minty once more. “All right,” Kent says, steeling himself, running his tongue over his teeth. “I want to talk to you guys, listen up.”

Heads turn, and eyes meet his, and the room goes quiet. In the corner, Coach O looks up from his coach’s board and gives Kent a subtle nod.

“This is it,” Kent says, settling into the energy of the room, the thrum of beating hearts and tapping sticks and drumming fingers. “This is the last game of the series, no matter what. We don’t have to save up our energy for the next game anymore. We don’t have to pull punches, we don’t have to hold back. This is the time to use up all those reserves, to push with everything we’ve got.” He takes a deep breath. “Remember how good it felt to sweep the Kings in the first round? Or beat out the Sharks in double OT?” He grins, energized, always enraptured by the dramatics of a close chase, a quick draw, a shocking upset. “We won the Western Conference Finals by one goal. _One_ goal. Same with the last game. We’ve had games in _this series_ with six points on our side of the board. We’ve got this in the fucking bag. All we need to do is go out there and play a calculated game, you know, tight passes and precise shots. When you see an opportunity, take it. When you see an opening, shoot.”

Coach O nods again, stoically, standing back to let Kent embellish the words that he has drilled into their heads for the last three months, the last year, the last five years.

Kent’s gaze tracks over the faces of the men whose collective success has defined the last five years of his life. It’s strange; he doesn’t love them. There are some that he doesn’t even like. But they are his, and he is theirs, and that has to be enough, at least for tonight. He will never do this again, not like this. _I will never be here again._

“It’s an honor,” says Kent, and it catches in his throat. “It’s an honor to play with you, to make it happen out there on the ice every day with you. It’s an honor to grow with you and learn from you and lead you in whatever way I can. And it’ll be an honor to lift the Cup with you tonight, so let’s get out there and show them what we’ve got.”

The room erupts, and Kent’s stomach twists, and Coach O’s eyes find Kent’s. They are undoubtedly, uncharacteristically warm.

_\--_

_Game 7: Washington Capitals @ Las Vegas Aces_

“Well, folks, this is it, the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals, with the Las Vegas Aces hosting the Washington Capitals at T-Mobile Arena here in the scorching Nevada heat—”

“The winner will hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup, engraved with the names of all who came before—”

“We have two incredibly and uniquely talented players captaining these teams, Kent Parson for Vegas and Alexander Ovechkin for Washington—”

“Two totally different generations of hockey, two totally different play styles—”

“And one final shot at the Cup this season—”

“And here they go, Parson and Ovechkin facing off at center ice—”

“At the end of the first period, we’re still scoreless, what a suspenseful game so far tonight—”

“We have Troy pushing through on the breakaway, Kopitar trailing him, he sends a clean pass over to Marchessault, Marchessault sends it back and Troy shoots and SCORES—”

“Oshie manages to get away from Schmidt to find a scoring opportunity and — SCORE — he finds a way to answer Troy’s goal—”

“The third period starts now, and the game is tied with one point for both Vegas and Washington—”

“Parson makes his way up the lane with his eyes on the prize, but his shot goes wide—”

“The shots on goal are just about evenly matched, with both teams taking every chance they can get—”

“For the second game in a row, we’re going into OT to decide the winner of the Stanley Cup Finals—”

“We’re closing out overtime with the game still tied at 1-1, we’ll head into second OT after a short break—”

“Here we go, we may be minutes away from a Stanley Cup win—”

_\--_

Everything _hurts._ The Aces can’t afford to have him miss a shift in OT, much less in double OT, so Kent, breathing rough and ragged, sweat stinging in his eyes and fogging up his visor, soldiers through on the front lines of the Aces’ offense. He’s tired, unbelievably so, and every muscle in his body aches. But he has to stay focused.

Kent looks out for a pass, and he gets one. 

When the puck collides with his stick, Kent cushions its impact with a slight drag back, getting it under control. He shifts it, quick, from forehand to backhand, keeping it close to his body. He moves with it, scoping, casting glances around for Troy and Schmidt. They are, mercifully, exactly where they need to be. In a burst of speed, thighs and calves and ankles screaming from overexertion, Kent streaks up as close to the goal as he dares to, ensuring that he has space, that he has Troy and Schmidt nearby, ready for the rebound.

He lines up, drifts into a feint, and, in a split second, beats the goalie.

The second that the puck leaves his stick, lifts up off the ice and into the air, Kent knows that it’s over.

He sees Holtby reach for it, a half-second too late, or perhaps not even a half-second. But, still, too late.

The puck hits the back of the net, and the siren _blares._

Kent cries out, a sharp sound that rings in his ears and echoes between the boards. He pushes off, drops to one knee, pumps his arm, and the whole team descends on him, pouring off the bench and into the zone, and Kent is folding, collapsing, blacking out.

\--

Kent doesn’t realize that he’s crying until he sees his reflection in the silvery Cup as he lifts it high over his head.

\--

_Aces 2, Capitals 1 (2OT)_

_\--_

_Series: Aces 4, Capitals 3_

_Stanley Cup Champions: Las Vegas Aces_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i based the structure of the playoffs around vgk's 2018 run for the cup, where they made it to the finals and lost to the caps in a really painful game 5. i used the same matchups that they had and everything, it's just that this is happening in 2014 except for 2018. think of this as my way of letting vgk get the win they deserved
> 
> a lot of the game commentary is just borrowed directly from the broadcasts, too, for my own ease of writing (i've also just kept most of the players on the caps / vgk to fill out the gameplay a little)
> 
> even with the template of the 2018 SCF, this was really hard to write for me, and i really struggled to make it feel suspenseful or interesting. i didn't want to bog this chapter down with too much of the commentary stuff, so i just did it for the final series, idk if it works or not, flame me in the comments if you hate it lol


	15. C3: announcement

Kent spends the next few weeks in a haze, first from shock, then champagne, and then, finally, as life begins to edge towards normal, beer. The Stanley Cup victory parade is a loud, bustling promenade through the Strip, beginning at noon and ending seemingly never; both the team and the fans spend the night bar-hopping downtown, and Kent finally breaks off and hires a car to take him home around seven-thirty the following morning. 

“So, tell me,” says Bob Zimmermann, a week or so later, sitting across from Kent in a radio booth with a red light blinking behind him. “How was your day with the Cup?”

Kent grins, his cowlick curling over the band of his headphones. “It was dope,” he says. “I took it to the racetrack just outside of Vegas and drove a few laps with it.”

“Oh, see, this is a man who knows my heart,” says Bob, laughing. “We could talk about cars all day, right, Kent?”

Kent laughs and leans back in his chair. “All day, every day,” he says.

Bob grins. “So you stayed in Vegas? No trips back up to New York?”

“No, well, Kaner already did the whole Niagara Falls thing in 2010, I think, so — I wanted to keep it local.” He smiles, mirror-like, and Bob, who knows Kent’s early history, understands that to mean that New York’s prodigal son would never return, that Kent would never allow any part of his new life to interact with his past, no matter how far Kent rose above it.

“This is your second Cup with the Aces,” says Bob, and the twinkle in his eyes gives Kent all the warning he needs to start preparing a deflection. “Do you see more in your future?”

“The Cup is always the goal,” says Kent, easy, choosing to keep it vague. “I’m definitely always going to be working towards another one.”

“What can you tell us about the progress you’ve made on contract talks since we last spoke?” Bob asks. “You become a free agent on July 1, only a few weeks from now.”

“I’ve been pretty hands-off about the details so far,” Kent says, which is true, because he still hasn’t found time to open up the specifications spreadsheet that Adrian had sent him before the playoffs began in April. “But when I have some numbers to report, you’ll be the first one I call, okay? I’ll let you break the story since you bought me lunch today.”

Bob laughs. “This is a big moment for you, becoming a free agent at the top of your game.”

“Yeah, I’ll be twenty-four in July,” says Kent. “They always say that twenty-four is when players are really in their prime, and I feel like my record this year proves that I’m performing consistently, at a high level, you know, so I’m looking to get a contract that’s responsive to the work I’ve been putting in.”

“Is there any chance that we won’t see you in an Aces jersey next season?” asks Bob, and Kent does his best to maintain his signature poker face.

“Right now, I’m just basking in the glow of this Cup win,” says Kent, in a masterful sidestep that comes from years of practice. “I’m so proud of these guys, proud of myself, proud of what we were able to accomplish this season. It’s hard to think about what will come next. Honestly, I’m just looking forward to a little bit of rest and relaxation this offseason—”

“Mm, of course — what are your plans for the summer?” Bob asks, finger hovering over the record button to signal that the interview is coming to a close.

“I was thinking about just chilling on an island somewhere,” says Kent. “Your listeners should tweet me their best vacation spots, I’m still figuring out what I wanna do.”

Bob laughs. “Kent Parson, thank you for taking the time to join us on air today,” he says.

“Thanks for having me,” Kent says, and Bob clicks the button. The red light behind his head blinks off.

Kent pulls out his phone and opens Twitter to a slew of mentions. “Jesus Christ,” he laughs. “There really are people just fucking sending me resort links. This is great, I should come on your show every time I can’t figure out what I want to eat for dinner. Look at the Bali hotel I just retweeted.”

He shows Bob the screen:

@kennethparson92

#90 for @nhlaces, #1 for action movie trivia

acting single, seeing double, drinking triples

Bob grins. “That’s a nice hotel,” he says. “But your name isn't Kenneth, is it?"

Kent grins. "No, I just do that to fuck with press people," he says. "I wasn't born in 1992, either."

Bob shakes his head, laughing. "Your picture, it’s your cat?”

“Yeah, I put her in a Leaf Village forehead protector,” says Kent, zooming in to show him. “You probably don’t know what that is.”

“No," says Bob, amused, leaning back in his chair and slipping from his scripted, radio-ready voice to his more natural, accented speech. He fixes Kent with a leveled look. “So, let’s talk. We’re off the air, off the record. What’s the real answer to the trade question, hm?”

Kent smiles a little. “I can’t talk about it,” he says. “But I guess you know what that means, eh?”

Bob’s bellowing dad-like laugh rings loud in the enclosed booth, and he fixes Kent with a knowing look, hand resting on his chest. “Trust me, yes, I’ve been there,” he says. “That’s interesting, I think, that you are willing to be picked up by another team.”

Kent grins. “I didn’t say that,” he says. “But — I mean, you know better than anyone that I never expected to be here in the first place. I’m glad I didn’t go second and end up on Long Island, like, I never wanna play for a New York team in my life, but I didn’t exactly expect to come to Vegas, either.”

Bob nods, hand on his cheek, considering the implications of a Kent Parson trade; it would undoubtedly be the biggest news in hockey, including the Stanley Cup win. Somebody always wins the Stanley Cup. Kent Parson doesn’t always defect from the team that brought him up in the league. “Well, I think anybody would be scrambling to give you a good deal, non? Two Cups under your belt, you know, young guy—”

“Right,” says Kent. “That’s what I’m hoping for. I talked to Adrian, my agent, and—”

“Ouais, I know Adrian,” says Bob, because he knows everyone. “I think he does a good job with players like you, you know, playmakers with high market value. He helped Lassiter get picked up for, hm, I think it was eight million. This was in 2010, back when people weren’t paying eight million for anybody but Crosby.”

Kent nods. “I mean, I don’t care about the money so much.” He gets comfortable in the chair, enjoying just _talking_ to someone. “I just want to be happy.”

“You’re not happy?” Bob asks, and the shade of genuine concern in his voice takes Kent by surprise; it makes his heart squeeze. He’s not used to people inquiring about his state of mind, or, if they do, for any reason other than determining how well he can be expected to perform at his job in spite of it.

He isn’t really sure how to answer Bob’s question. It ought to be a simple affirmative; he _isn’t_ happy, of course, but he doesn’t want to tell Bob that it’s because he hasn’t been able to adjust the way he needed to after Jack’s overdose. He is well aware that Bob and Alicia have undoubtedly had a much worse time in the wake of the tragedy that befell their only child, that they have, in all likelihood, never been the same since. 

They are Jack’s _parents;_ Kent is just some tagalong street rat who cared too much for a boy living in a tall, tall tower, who fell too far when the world turned upside down.

But he also doesn’t want to lie and say that he hasn’t been able to adjust to the league, that he hasn’t been able to hack it in the five years that he has spent wrapped up in it all. In all reality, Kent can take the pressure; he can take the fame, the physical demands, the unrelenting schedule. It’s what happens behind closed doors that threatens to break him: isolation, loneliness, and those persistent nightmares.

He doesn’t understand _why_ he isn’t over the situation with Jack, either. Of course it was hard; of course it hurt; of course it colored his response to everything, for a while. But five years have passed, and Kent is still choked by it. It’s embarrassing, it’s melodramatic. It’s not his place.

“I never fit in with Vegas very well,” he says, finally. “I don’t really get along with the guys. Obviously we can make it work out on the ice, but — I’m actually—” It catches in his throat; Kent realizes that he has never said it out loud before. “I’m actually pretty lonely, and—”

He swallows past a lump in his throat, trying to will it away, because he is not interested in beginning a pattern of crying in front of Bob Zimmermann every time he sees him. As much as he was once Bob’s second son, or so it seemed, things are different now. Kent is out on his own, and has been for half a decade. He doesn’t have Bob the way he used to. Bob doesn’t have Kent the way he used to. Nobody has Kent, really. But he’s lived that way before.

Bob, truly empathetic at heart, hums, and doesn’t push, and lets Kent breathe. 

“It’s just,” Kent says, and he stops again.

Bob shuffles a few papers on the recording table, stashing them in a drawer for his records. Somehow, he finds a way to give Kent space in a five-by-five room.

“It’s just,” Kent tries again, and picks at his nails. “It’s just that I feel like — um, I feel like—”

Bob looks up at him, meeting his eyes.

“I just feel like I always fuck everything up,” Kent says, and his voice breaks.

“No, no,” says Bob, but Kent is already interrupting him.

“I’ve never been able to connect with people like I wanted to, my whole life — my parents and — the kids at school and — my team when I was little and — this team now and — I feel like I’m the only constant, like, I’m the thing that’s — there’s something about me that’s—”

“No,” Bob says, again.

“If that’s not it, then there are like a hundred people who are just wrong about me—”

“Then there are a hundred people who are wrong,” says Bob, firmly. “You will find your place, it takes us all a little bit of time, and discomfort, and work.”

Kent stares at him, knowing that he can’t be candid with him about this, about the fact that it has never been as easy as that for him, and that he suspects it never will be. He can’t say that to Bob Zimmermann, not now, not here — probably not for months, or years, or ever. He wonders how many conversations Bob and Jack had that were like this: loving and supportive, but so far off the mark that it ceases to be helpful. 

“You’re right,” he says. That’s what he lands on. “You’re right. I guess I just need — a fresh start or something.”

Bob smiles, and stands, and offers his hand. “I look forward to seeing what happens, you know, with your contract,” he said. “Maybe you’ll end up on our side of the continent, hmm?”

Kent smiles flatly, taking his hand and gripping it in a firm shake. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll see you around, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Bob laughs. “You know, you don’t have to call me that anymore,” he says. “We are in the same industry now, non?”

Kent smiles again, humorless. “I guess so. Thanks, Bob.”

“Drive safely, all right?”

“I will.”

Kent steps out of the studio to a gust of wind that rushes between the skyscrapers, catching Kent off guard. He hugs himself and heads briskly in the direction of his parked rental car.

\--

As June wears on, and as the free agency date approaches, Kent has spent an inordinate amount of time taking in his surroundings. His house is, still, primarily functional rather than comfortable; he has never made a concerted effort to decorate it beyond hiring an interior designer to take care of the furniture-buying and picture-hanging and color-matching. This is his house because he owns it, not because anything intrinsic to him is reflected in it.

On his early-morning commute, he sees that the things that had grown old are new again: the desert sunrise, the heat rising from the blacktop of his driveway mere hours later, the drive to the rink in his luxury car. He won’t necessarily miss these things, but it feels strange to leave them, to know that he will never retrace these paths again, day in and day out, from the rink to his house to the store to his house and back again. He can’t imagine a highway other than this one; he can’t imagine a house besides his own.

He wants to, he just can’t.

\--

“All right, I’ve heard back from some organizations and I’ve got some initial numbers for you,” says Adrian as soon as Kent picks up the phone.

“Oh, shit,” says Kent, swiveling on the bar stool at his kitchen island. “All right, shoot.”

Adrian lays it out, all the details and the options, the advantages and the drawbacks of each. “I can send you a file with this info in it, too, so don’t worry about keeping it all in your head. I just want to see if these early conversations are going in a direction that you’re interested in. These aren’t final numbers, by any means, and they’re not offers, either.”

Kent nods, even though Adrian can’t see him. “For sure. I get it. When do you want me to hit you back with, you know, first impressions?”

“I can give you a few days to look things over,” Adrian says, making the tight turnaround sound like a generous allowance.

“Can do,” Kent says, recognizing the play for what it is. “I’ll call you on Wednesday.”

\--

Kent’s first impressions are _good._

Sometimes, he gets so caught up in his abject fear of rejection on a personal level that he forgets how marketable he is as a product. Maybe his peers don’t like him, but GMs do. It has never been more obvious to him than it is in this moment, as he sizes up the facts of the matter.

Kent Parson is twenty-three years old, one year shy of his predicted peak. He has two Stanley Cups with the Las Vegas Aces, a team that was (successfully) built around his skill set. He went first overall in the 2009 NHL draft; he won the Calder Memorial Trophy. He has set records for the team, for the league, for the world. He has a proven track record of hard work, follow-through, and the kind of drive that people have to be born with. And he did it all, unbeknownst to most of the league, suffering — half-drunk and wholly alone.

The cumulative worth of those truths stares Kent in the face as he squints at his computer screen. He has worked so hard, through so much, to land himself squarely in this exact spot. He is still a product, but demand for him is high, and that gives him the kind of power that he has always craved: the power to make decisions for himself, on his terms, to get him where he wants to be.

This is going to work.

He texts Adrian: _go ahead and get some offers on the table. i’m interested._

\--

Two weeks later, with express permission from all involved, Bob Zimmermann breaks the story.

“Two-time Stanley Cup Champion Kent Parson, who became a free agent three days ago, is already on the move,” Bob says, sitting behind the desk as a SportsNet anchor. Kent smiles a little, propping his phone up on the airplane tray as he celebrates his twenty-fourth birthday by leaving the desert behind for good. “He will hit the ice in the fall wearing the historic red and white sweater of the Detroit Red Wings.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time for a new arc!!


	16. C4: fresh start

When Kent lands in Detroit, he heads straight to the Joe Louis Arena. They’re waiting for him there, he knows, thanks to the voicemail that had come through after he landed. Even though he knows that this get-together will be entirely informal, a rushed affair due to the quick turnaround between the trade announcement and his arrival, Kent is, annoyingly, nervous to the point of nausea. It twists in his gut and thrums in his ears, restricting his breath and causing his hands to shake. He knows that, as soon as he walks through the doors, the nerves will disappear entirely; he just has to make it a few more blocks down the street before that can happen.

He has, predictably, always felt a certain sense of apprehension before walking into a new home rink for the first time. He has only done so three times in his life: once as a child, after signing himself up for the rec league hockey team; once as a teenager, after being miraculously drafted into the QMJHL; and once as an adult, after he had pulled an Aces jersey over his head on national television and, hours later, caught a red-eye flight to Vegas.

But what gives him pause is not just the uncertainty that comes from being a temporary outsider in the close-knit community of a hockey team. It’s also the ambiguity of who makes up that social fabric, whether they will let him fold in or relegate him to the selvage, the margins, the outside-but-inside purgatory that he had occupied in Vegas.

Kent approaches the door. He hesitates, his hand gripping the pull bar.

The last time he had walked into an unfamiliar rink, he had been received by a resentful roundtable of players who had expected — and wanted — someone else.

But that wouldn’t happen here; Kent had specifically chosen a team who wanted _him._

The time before that, he had walked into the Colisée Financière Sun Life and locked eyes with the most beautiful boy in the world, and it had all but made and ruined his life in equal measure.

He pulls the door open and steps over the threshold.

This time, he meets the gaze of a boy with chestnut hair and hot-tea eyes, and the similarity of circumstance almost strikes him down where he stands.

He has a jaw like Kent’s and a nose like Jack’s, and a stance like a Ralph Lauren model. His hands are shoved in his chino pockets, his fringe falling against his forehead in a casual cascade. Kent thinks he looks fairly young by NHL standards, not quite bulked up and tooth-poor like the mid-to-late-career players. He has an ease about him, a coolness that Kent admires. He doesn’t have to covet it, exactly, because Kent takes pride in the fact that he himself is deeply cool. But it is certainly still a magnetic quality, something that draws Kent’s attention to him and holds it there, like a firm grip encircling his wrist. 

Kent blinks first.

“You’re Kent Parson,” the boy says, approaching him, hands still in his pockets.

“Yeah,” says Kent. “Hey.”

The boy opens his mouth to speak, but whatever is on his tongue is drowned out by the coach’s booming voice coming from directly over his left shoulder.

“Welcome to Detroit, Parser,” the coach says, stepping past the boy and extending his hand for a shake. Kent takes it and smiles.

“I’m glad to be here,” he says. “Really glad. This team was — first on my list.”

The coach looks incredibly pleased. “Well, we can’t wait to put you to work for us,” he says. “I just wanted to give you a chance to meet the guys before the preseason starts, just informally since everything happened so fast — we’ll have our arena staff get your gear sorted out by this evening, so you should be good to go if you want to come out and skate anytime, just to get used to things.”

Kent grins. “Great. I really appreciate the hustle.”

The coach nods once, affirming. “Well, let us know how we can help you get settled in,” he says. “We have a few new guys already, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a few more before we hit the ice in September, so you’re in good company.”

“Thanks,” Kent says, glancing at the boy, who isn’t exactly hovering, but is also not straying too far. “I’m excited to get going.”

The coach is quickly replaced by other men who want to shake his hand in greeting. Some of them are players he’s interacted with on the ice before, but the coach is right: many of them are unfamiliar faces, new acquisitions to frame the rebuild of a historic but currently-underperforming team.

Soon, though, the crowd begins to thin out, and the boy with hot-tea eyes finds him again.

“I’m Connor Whisk,” he says. “I didn’t get to introduce myself before.”

Kent nods, and then remembers. “Oh,” he says. “You were drafted — oh, shit, you were first overall this year, right?”

Connor grins. “First overall gang,” he says, and brushes knuckles with Kent in a fistbump.

“No doubt,” Kent says, and grins right back.

Connor looks slightly starstruck still, but he is doing a valiant job of (mostly) covering it up. “I don’t want to keep you if you’re wiped out from the flight,” he says. “But if you’re hungry—”

“I’m starving,” says Kent.

“I’ll drive,” says Connor.

Kent’s heart is _soaring._ He has been in Detroit all of two hours, and it’s already better than the five years he dragged himself through in Vegas. 

_This is going to work._

\--

“So,” says Connor, pushing the fennel salad around on his plate. “Detroit, huh?”

“I like cars,” Kent says, simply. He grins. “I like Gordie Howe. I like the snow. Detroit’s perfect.”

Connor nods. “I hadn’t seen snow until I moved to Canada,” he says. “It’s nice.”

“Where are you from?” Kent asks, sipping his beer. “I’m from Buffalo, so it snowed all the fucking time.”

Connor nods again as he finishes a bite of salmon. Of course he knows where Kent is from; every hockey fan alive, casual or fanatic, already knows Kent’s fact sheet by heart. It would be weird if Kent thought about it at all, but he doesn’t. “I’m from Arizona. You get it, you just came up here from the desert.”

“Honestly, I fucking hated it,” says Kent, laughing. “No offense.”

“No, it’s weird.” Connor brings his water glass to his mouth, and Kent is forcibly reminded that he isn’t old enough to order a beer in a restaurant. “I don’t know that Canada was much better, but at least it was different.”

Kent digs through his hazy memory of watching the draft with Troy and a few of the other guys, all still drunk from their Stanley Cup party month. “Were you in the Q? I feel like they said—”

Connor nods. “Yeah. I played for Gatineau.”

“Nice,” says Kent. “I was in Rimouski, but—” He offers another fistbump. “Quebec gang, eh?”

Connor cracks up and knocks his fist against Kent’s. “Look, I’m not gonna pretend that I don’t know that you played for Rimouski,” he says. “I actually know — a lot about you, man. Lots of people do, I don’t know if you’re aware.”

“Oh yeah?” Kent says, mildly, sitting back in his chair. “What else do you know about me, huh?”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “I know that today’s your birthday.”

“Happy Fourth of July,” Kent says. “It fits, right? Best American-born player and everything. Not to sound like a dick, but it’s a fun coincidence.”

A smile quirks at the edge of Connor’s mouth. “Hey, listen. I’ve been here for a month already, so I’m kind of an expert. You don’t know much about Detroit yet, do you?”

“No chance,” Kent says. “I just got here and didn’t Google a damn thing before I got on the plane.”

“I’ll make a deal with you, then.”

“I’m listening.”

Connor leans in. “I’ll show you where to watch some fireworks if you buy us a six-pack to drink while we’re walking around.”

“Deal,” Kent says, without hesitation. They shake on it. Connor’s hand is dry, but it’s warm.

\--

They make their way down the Detroit Riverwalk, red and white and blue fireworks sparking loud and glittering bright above their heads. Kent carries a six-pack of Molson’s between them, cracking one open with the crook of his index finger and taking a deep drink. “This is cool,” he says, looking up at the crackling sky above them.

Connor smiles a little, taking a sip of his own beer. “Yeah, I saw the announcement for this on Instagram. Usually I don’t give a fuck about Instagram ads, but — yeah, no, this is cool.”

They walk in silence for a while, necks craned back, the fireworks mirrored in the Detroit River and in their eyes.

“Why did you leave?” Connor asks, eventually, and Kent can tell from his measured tone that he’s been hanging back from asking him that all night, that it is still taking some level of vocal control to suppress the eagerness that would betray his morbid curiosity.

He takes a drink, searching for the right words. Kent isn’t sure what is and what isn’t appropriate to tell a boy that he met mere hours ago, and, even more importantly, a new teammate, a rookie whose opinion of the league’s culture must still be heavily dependent on other people’s stories. 

He knows that, if he were eighteen again, he would want older players to warn him about the sinister side of playing professional hockey rather than painting the same rosy unreality that had sent him headlong into shock and chaos. 

But he also knows that, at eighteen, it had felt impossible to stabilize himself in the midst of a near-complete lifestyle change, and he suspects that any rookie would feel this way, even if their best friend was not lying in a hospital bed two and a half thousand miles away. He doesn’t want to shake the foundation on which Connor is likely building his stick-house dreams, even if that foundation is built on assumptions, on hopes, on falsehoods. It’s hard enough to build the house up in the first place, to become comfortable inhabiting it, without a scorned wolf blowing it all down.

Kent is also worried that, if he overshares, Connor will think he’s a head case. Historically, Kent attaches to people too quickly, and, historically, that has backfired. Even knowing this, it takes Kent an incredible amount of self-discipline to remind himself that Connor is not his friend, not yet.

But he wants him to be, so he tells him the truth.

“It wasn’t right for me,” he says, quietly. “I was lonely, and I was dealing with a lot of shit. It wasn’t easy. I just needed to get out of there and start over.”

As they walk, Connor reaches for another beer, taps it twice, and cracks it open. “I get that,” he says. His voice is odd, contemplative and solemn, and Kent wonders, in spite of himself, if Connor is running from something, too.

"I'm glad it's over," says Kent.

"Happy birthday," says Connor, as the fireworks boom and sizzle above their heads, and he's right: this fresh start is the best birthday gift in the world.

\--

Kent’s first presser in Michigan is absolutely _packed_ with reporters. As he scans the sea of faces, he reflects on how glad he is to be an extrovert. Specifically, he loves being the center of attention, and that is the theme of the day.

“I’m proud to be joining the Detroit Red Wings organization,” Kent says, leaning into the mic. “I really admire the history of this team, from Gordie Howe to Steve Yzerman to — the Russian Five and — obviously the legacy as an Original Six team — and I want to thank the city of Detroit for giving me such a warm welcome already. I look forward to getting to know the guys, getting on the ice for training camp, and getting a head start on a successful season.”

“You just won a Stanley Cup with the Aces,” says a journalist from NESN. “What made you defect so soon after a win like that?”

“At the end of the day, hockey is a business,” says Kent, and means it, even though this is the epitome of a safe answer. “I have so much respect for the Aces and so much pride in what we were able to accomplish this past season. I’m really excited to bring that energy here to Detroit and see what we can generate out on the ice.”

Another journalist follows up, recorder in hand. “What do you have to say to the Vegas fans who feel blindsided by this trade?”

Kent resents the question, but he has perfected a media-specific poker face, and he employs it now. “I’d hope they would understand that trades happen all the time, and no one person is the sole reason to follow a great team. Vegas has some amazing guys and a great playbook. It was just time for me to move on, and I’m happy to have landed here in Detroit.”

“Have you managed to try any local hangouts to see what Detroit has to offer?” asks someone from the city’s newspaper, mercifully.

“I’m definitely taking restaurant recommendations,” Kent says, relaxing, flashing his media smile. “I’m on Twitter if anybody wants to link me to their favorite stuff.”

\--

While Kent waits for the check, Connor levels with him. “Hey,” he says. “Where are you staying right now?”

Kent tries to remember the name of the place. “Some hotel by the river,” he says. “I’m doing that until I can bring myself to call a realtor and start that whole fucking headache.”

Connor _almost_ hesitates, but Kent can see him decide to push his luck. “I’m looking for someone to move in with after my AirBNB is up,” he says. “I paid for a month. Maybe we could find somewhere together if it wouldn’t, like, cramp your style to have—”

“Yeah, no, let’s do it,” says Kent, immediately. “I wanted a housemate in Vegas, but I waited too long to ask. That would be — so dope, actually.”

Connor grins. “Awesome,” he says. “Let me get your number and we can text about it.”

“For sure,” Kent says, and resolves to call a realtor the same exact second that he gets into his rental car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i LOVE the tradition of hockey players living together so here it is
> 
> also, you may be asking: what? whiskey's not from samwell? so let me fill you in on my timeline fuckery
> 
> -in canon, whiskey starts at samwell in the fall of 2015 at 18 years old  
> -right now in this fic, it's the summer of 2014  
> -i've bumped whiskey up a year in age to make things easier for me  
> -because he doesn't go NCAA in this fic, and because whiskey is canonically on jack's level in terms of scoring at least, i've put him in the Q, which is the other common route for draft hopefuls  
> -???  
> -profit
> 
> one more thing: i know that the red wings play in the little caesars arena right now, but in 2014 they played in joe louis arena, which they stopped using in 2017. it has since been demolished, RIP  
> 


	17. C5: full house

Kent’s not picky, so he makes an offer on the third [ house](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/31805-Telegraph-Rd-Franklin-MI-48025/24587887_zpid/) that he tours. 

The place is in Franklin, tucked away behind trees so that it is entirely invisible from the road. It has two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and four garage doors.

He’s not picky, but the house is _perfect._

The realtor had initially taken him through Bloomfield Hills, showing off the mansions of Pistons players in an attempt to entice his eye. But those spacious, high-ceilinged castles had only reminded Kent of the echoes that had permeated his place in Vegas. 

“I want something a little more regular,” Kent had said, vague and unhelpful. But the realtor, in all his experience with interpreting the poorly-communicated desires of the nouveau riche, had just said, “I think I know an area you’d like.” With that, they had gotten back in the car and driven directly out towards Franklin.

The first house they’d seen there had been _the one._

By the end of the month, Kent has the keys in his pocket and a Red Wings flag out front.

It _is_ big, like his old house, and it has the same kind of open floor plan. But something is noticeably, if intangibly, different here. 

Before, every square foot had felt crushingly empty, and bare, and grey. Now, in similarly unfurnished spaces, Kent can imagine the silhouettes of people sitting around a table, or on the deck, or out in the yard, laughing and drinking and filling up Kent’s soul with the kind of joy that _would_ be his default setting, if things hadn’t happened the way that they had.

 _Hey,_ Connor texts him, a few days after the closing. _Were we still gonna talk about an apt plan or what’s up? I have to be out of this airbnb in 4 days._

Kent realizes that, in between meetings with his real estate agent and settling into the atmosphere of his new team, he had completely forgotten to tell Connor about the house. 

_lol i JUST bought a house,_ Kent texts back. _when are you good to move in?_

\--

Three days later, Connor drives up in his black SUV with all of his worldly possessions in the trunk (a hockey bag, two suitcases, a cooler stuffed with bedsheets, and a set of golf equipment). Through the tinted windows, Kent can see him lean forward a little to stare up at the house. He parks in the circle drive and hops out, looking incredulous.

“I thought we were gonna get an apartment or something, not the Hamptons house from Gossip Girl,” he says, but he doesn’t seem upset about it at all.

“You watch Gossip Girl?” Kent says, and thinks, once again: _this is going to work._

They tour the interior, which is already starting to fill up with the furniture basics that Kent has been queuing deliveries for all month long, the couches and chairs and tables and beds that had started arriving on the official closing date earlier in the week. Purrs has already claimed one of the armchairs for herself. Kent cannot wait for the day that his cars get delivered from Vegas; then, it will truly feel like home.

“This is so great,” Connor says, standing out on the back deck with Kent, surveying the side yard. “We could put cornhole boards over there—”

“Jesus Christ, that’s some midwestern shit,” Kent says. “Michigan is already rubbing off on you.”

Connor grins. “You don’t know what I was like before,” he says. “Maybe I always liked cornhole.”

Kent is struck, suddenly, by the fact that Connor is right: Kent has no idea what he was like before. He doesn’t know anything about him, really, except for the little that he has learned in the past month of training camp — and even that has been mostly hockey-adjacent information. He is, in terms of his friendship with Kent, a clean social slate, a non-threatening presence, a baggage-less boy with no unsavory history that they are inescapably joined by. 

When Kent thinks about the possibility of becoming friends with Jack again, someday, if he’s lucky, he recognizes that they will have to probe into the details of their lives together, their lives apart, to make sense of it all, to know what to apologize for and what to hold fast to. They’ll have to revisit the painful things, the shadows, the people they used to be before they became whoever it is that they are now. That will be the only way to bury the knives and move on.

That expectation has, over the years, burrowed itself into the root of what Kent imagines that friendship is about: clinging to the brightest spots of a shared history to inspire continued closeness, to respond to inevitable conflict by learning to be softer, more charitable, more forgiving.

But Connor is not Jack; they have nothing to forgive each other for. Their friendship could be something else, something easy, something centered in the _now._

“Want to toast to the new house?” Kent asks, and Connor nods.

\--

Connor stands at the bar, tipping bottles back to see the labels. “What do you usually drink?” he asks, mumbly, distracted as he inspects the St-Germain’s elegantly-sloped sides.

“Vodka soda,” Kent says, and Connor looks bewildered. “Or a beer, if it’s easier,” he says, grinning.

“No, no, I can do a vodka soda,” Connor says, but he doesn’t sound confident. “It’s — vodka and—?”

“Soda,” says Kent, with a smirk. Connor reaches for the Coke bottle, and Kent speaks up quickly to correct him. “Club soda. And a lime.”

“Right,” Connor says, and pulls his hand back, reaching for the club soda instead. “Jesus. I swear to God I’m not stupid.”

“You’re fine,” Kent says, grinning still, his left arm over the back of the couch as he turns to watch Connor at the bar. “I mean, I knew how to make a vodka soda at eighteen, but—”

Connor cracks up, shakes his head, uncaps the vodka. “How much of each?” he asks, giving in to his obvious ignorance.

“One part vodka, two parts soda,” says Kent. “But it’s whatever, honestly. I’m not a stickler.”

Connor carries two over-full highball glasses back to the couch, settling onto the leather cushion gingerly to avoid spilling their drinks. 

Kent takes his and sips cautiously. It’s fine. To this day, he has still never had a bad vodka soda.

“Have you never made a mixed drink before, seriously?” he asks Connor, still laughing a little.

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time for cocktail parties in the Q,” Connor says, sarcastically. “It was hard enough keeping the beer hidden. None of us were stupid enough to try to smuggle, like, multiple liquor bottles onto the bus just so we could have ourselves a French 75.”

Kent grins. “I bet you had just about enough of French _anything_ up there, eh?”

Connor grins back and shakes his head, sipping his drink. “Yeah, for sure.”

Kent lifts the glass to his lips, savoring the chill of it, and takes a slow sip. “I kind of miss it,” he says. “Some parts of it.”

Connor looks at him, guarded, and Kent _knows_ that he knows the story. Everyone knows the story. Or, at least, the media’s version of it. He hopes that Connor knows not to ask for further details. “What do you miss the most?”

Kent shakes his head, wincing, pretending that it’s from the bitterness of the lime and not the bitterness of the memory. It’s not exactly a direct appeal for information; in all reality, it is a perfectly reasonable, neutral question. But Kent’s answer is anything but neutral, and the thought of it burns in his chest, more prickly than the creeping heat of liquor ever has. 

He’s not ready to talk about Jack. He’s not sure if he ever will be again. He takes the easy way out, even if he fully expects that Connor will see it for what it is. “I miss Quebec,” he says, finally, and spends a few moments inspecting the lime rind in his glass before he can finish his thought. “It’s like a different world there in the wintertime. It always felt like this bubble where nothing mattered but hockey, not even—” He takes a drink, just to steady himself. “Not even stuff that should have mattered, I guess.” He pauses, frowning at the dour tone that emerges in his voice without his permission. “That’s not really what I meant to say. I just mean, like, how cold it was and stuff, not like — serious business.” This is, of course, a lie, but it’s a necessary one.

Connor nods, and appears willing to take Kent’s statement at face value. “The cold was hard for me at first,” he says.

Kent smiles, and after another drink, it spreads into a grin. “You know what I don’t miss? Getting screamed at in the locker game whenever we lost to Drakkar.”

“The coaching staff is actually brutal,” says Connor. “There’s nothing you can do but just, like, shut up and take it.”

Kent nods. “It’s not that different in the NHL, to be honest,” he says. “But, like, if you’re good — then you don’t really have to worry as much about it as you do in the Q, because you’ve already made it. The worst thing they can do is trade you or send you down to the AHL. But that’ll never happen if you make yourself irreplaceable.”

Connor nods, like he’s taking mental notes. “That’s what you did,” he said, but it comes across as more of a question than a statement.

“I guess,” Kent says. “I got lucky that Vegas needed a guy like me. I mean, I guess the team drafting first always _needs a guy,_ if you know what I mean. They wouldn’t have the first pick if they didn’t fucking suck at hockey.”

Connor grins. “They don’t suck at hockey now,” he says, and Kent takes it as a personal compliment.

“They might from now on,” he says, and knows it’s cocky, but doesn’t care, because it’s true. 

Connor laughs, sipping his drink. “It’s hard to imagine, like, getting through the Q with all of the — you know, the abuse, really, and just — reporting for duty at your dream job — and it’s exactly the same. I hope that’s not how it pans out here. For either of us.”

“We’ll see,” Kent says, and shrugs. “I never thought that the pressure was the hardest part, here or in the Q.”

“The French was harder than anything,” Connor says. “I guess I didn’t realize just how much of it — like, half the time, they didn’t bother to translate anything, and I just had to follow everyone’s lead.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Kent says, remembering how closely he had watched Jack’s back in those early weeks, reading the shifting plane of his tensed shoulders as a signal for which drill was in the process of being called. “I got it eventually, though, after a couple of months.”

“I got what I needed to,” Connor says. “But I never felt, like, comfortable with it. It’s only been a few months since I was in Gatineau, and I feel like I’ve probably forgotten it all already.”

Kent shrugs. “It’s not that hard.”

Connor looks at him. “You’re smart,” he says.

Kent laughs at that. “No chance.” He shakes his head, plucking the lime rind out of his glass and sucking on it, savoring the sharp taste on his tongue. “I would have failed high school if I hadn’t copied my teammates’ homework all the time. The only thing I was ever good at was math. I wasn’t even good in my French class, I just knew how to talk like the other guys did.”

“Being smart isn’t the same thing as being good at school,” says Connor, but the focused intensity in his eyes just serves to confirm for Kent that, if anything, Connor is the smart one. He always has that look about him; his eyes can sweep a room, pick up the vibe, and mirror it exactly. He has the quickest wit that Kent has ever parleyed with, and Kent’s fairly sure that he saw him reading a book in his car before practice one morning.

“You’re definitely the smart one,” Kent says, “between the two of us.”

Connor smiles then, and there’s something behind it, something Kent can’t quite make out. “To the two of us,” he says, clinking his half-full highball glass against Kent’s near-empty one. “And the house.”

They tip their glasses back. 

Together, they drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kent is a glass-half-empty person right now, and whiskey is the glass-half-full boy he needs


	18. C6: renovations

For the first time in a long time, nearly a year now, Kent wakes up in a bed, to a real alarm instead of the _beep-beepbeep-beep_ of his Casio.

He had considered trying to nest on the couch like he had done in Vegas, but he hadn’t been sure how to explain it to Connor. He hasn’t had his recurring nightmare since before the playoffs, so Kent had taken the risk, and it had paid off — at least so far.

As he buries his face in his down pillow, Kent listens for Connor. He wonders if he’s an early riser, like Kent has always been, and, if so, whether or not he would join him for a run. He doesn’t hear any telltale sounds from downstairs, though, so he swings himself out of bed and goes down the hall to open Connor’s bedroom door.

“Hey,” Kent says. “It’s five. Do you wanna go on a run?”

“It’s—” Connor’s sleep-tousled head emerges from under the comforter. His eyes are barely open. “It’s _five?"_

Kent is quickly realizing that Connor is not, in fact, an early riser. “Yeah,” he says. “I usually run from five to six or so. What time do you normally get up?”

Connor just glares at him and burrows back under the covers. “I’ll make my debut when I’m ready to,” he grumbles. “I work out in the daytime, like a normal person.”

Kent grins. “Whatever, suit yourself, man.”

“Shut the door,” Connor demands, and Kent pulls it _nearly_ closed behind him, leaving it barely ajar. Through the crack, Kent can hear Connor’s anguished wail. He grins.

Connor doesn’t wake up until after Kent has returned from his run, finished his cool-down workout, made a smoothie, and watched two episodes of _The Bachelor._ When he does make his way downstairs, the first thing he does is flip Kent off.

“Morning,” says Kent.

“Fuck you,” says Connor, on his way into the kitchen. “Wait, are you watching _The Bachelor?"_

“Yeah, I didn’t get to finish it last season because of the playoffs, I’m catching up.”

“Sean picks Catherine,” Connor says, and, this time, Kent flips _him_ off.

\--

They spend most of their day getting the house in order. Kent feels a real urgency to complete all house-related projects before the preseason begins; he knows that he will never pick the drill back up again if it means forgoing what little free time he has to practice his Peach combo attacks in Smash.

Kent pressure-washes the garage floor in preparation for the arrival of his cars. Connor hires painters, and Kent hires an interior designer to make sense of the furniture from the old house. Connor sets up the ping-pong table outside next to their new cornhole boards, and Kent scrubs down the grill. Connor buys dishes; Kent buys beer. 

They mount the television together, or, rather, Kent holds it up with one hand and screws it into the wall with the other while Connor stands back, chewing his thumbnail, telling him to move it _left, a little_ or _up, maybe?_

“Easier said than done,” Kent growls past the screws he’s holding between his teeth.

“No, you’re doing great,” Connor says, and grins.

\--

Kent manages to mount the television with quite a bit of assistance from his level and zero assistance from his housemate. He stands back, chewing his lip, and throws in the towel.

“Looks good,” Connor says as he brings a bag of Chinese food containers over to the couch.

“You’re welcome,” Kent says, and kicks him. They’re friends, he thinks.

Connor finds the remote and queues up _The Bachelor._ “I mean it,” he says. “Now that he’s on the big screen, you can really tell he played college football. His shoulders are like a mile wide up there. Just, like, super built.” 

Kent glances at him, trying to decipher any possible subtext in Connor’s appreciative expression. As a deeply-closeted young athlete, he has always been sensitive to comments like that, but that doesn’t mean he has a sixth sense; it only means that Kent can’t trust himself to interpret them objectively. “I guess,” he says.

Connor looks at him and grins. “Don’t you wish you could dress like that?” he asks, and Kent’s not sure if it’s a cover-up or a double-down. “He always looks so fucking sharp.”

Kent raises his eyebrows. “Have you seen my closet? I wear suits like that every day during the regular season.”

A smirk twists at the edges of Connor’s mouth. “I guess you do,” he says, coyly, as if that’s what he had been thinking about all along. Kent furrows his brow.

“It’ll be your life soon, too, man, don’t worry. Before you know it, you won’t have to go a day without getting photographed in custom Gucci suits.”

Connor pops the cap off his beer. “That’s the plan.” He sips. “As soon as my signing bonus hits my bank.”

“It hasn’t?”

“I haven’t checked, honestly,” says Connor, and, in that moment, Kent realizes that the suave manner that Connor always inhabits is, rather than cool arrogance, instead the direct personification of the unmatched sense of security that stems only from generational wealth. He suspects that this is the same easy joviality that’s playing at the corners of his eyes right now, teasing his mouth into a grin, making him look at Kent like he said something clever. He should have known; Jack had been known to take on that same look, too, when he was in a good mood, when Kent made him laugh in that rare, uninhibited way, burying his red face in his hands and waving Kent off.

Kent turns his gaze back up to the television and tries to put the similarities between Jack and Connor out of his mind. The overlap had been obvious to him from the very first moment that he and Connor had locked eyes in the Joe Louis Arena; something about Connor had been (and remains) very familiar, even if he hasn’t quite figured it all out yet. It doesn’t bother him, exactly, but something about Connor makes Kent hope that he sticks around.

If he’s too much like Jack, he won’t.

\--

“We should host something,” says Connor, after a few drinks. Kent looks at him in the dim light flickering up from the smoldering fire pit on their back deck. “A housewarming party, you know?”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, we could grill out, like — we have a pretty private yard.”

Kent’s initial hesitation evaporates as soon as he remembers that this isn’t Vegas. It’s a different crowd, a different atmosphere entirely. Different possibilities.

“Let’s do it,” he says. “After we get the gym set up, though, or I’ll never do it.”

“Deal,” says Connor, and he cracks open another beer.

\--

They stay up late watching television, as per usual for Kent. He’s not sure what is _per usual_ for Connor, but he wants to find out. It’s been so long since he’s had a friend that he had all but forgotten the thrill of getting to know someone like this, in their intimate spaces, in their comfort zone, until he had started learning Connor’s routines.

“You get up late,” Kent says, voicing one, turning his head to look at Connor. He has to wait for his vision to catch up, but when it does, he can see Connor grinning at him.

“Yeah, you figured that out the hard way, huh?” Connor sits back and rests an arm over the back of the couch. “I’m not a morning person. I like my bed.”

“It’s _my_ bed,” Kent says, and grins like an idiot. “I bought it.”

Connor laughs. “Do you want me to cut you a check?” he asks. “I will if it means I can do whatever I want in there.”

“Sleeping in?” Kent asks.

Connor grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

Kent shoves him.

\--

Kent taps out of the _Bachelor_ marathon around two o’clock in the morning.

“Some of us,” he says, standing unsteadily, “have shit to do in” — he checks his Casio — “three hours.”

“No chance it’s one of your self-imposed torture rituals, is it?” Connor asks dryly. “There’s not, like, a rule saying you have to get up at five and run around the block or whatever.” He glances at the bar cart behind the couch and reaches for a bottle of wine. “You could stay here on the couch and keep drinking with me, if you wanted.”

Kent considers him for a long moment. “Fine,” he says. “It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all-nighter.”

Connor grins. “That’s because you’re old,” he says, and Kent swats at his leg.

“I’m not fucking _old,_ I’m twenty-four—”

“You’re old,” says Connor decisively. “I know these khakis make me look mature and everything, but I was still in high school, like, three months ago. _You_ have a retirement plan, I can just tell.”

“My retirement plan is being a goddamn millionaire,” says Kent, wounded, but Connor’s right: Kent _does_ have a trusted team of financial advisors, and a retirement account, and a personalized stock portfolio. _Fuck._

Connor grins and maneuvers into a sitting position, one hand choking the neck of the wine bottle. A splash of red stains his Supreme shirt, but he doesn’t flinch. “Me too, man.” He goes for a fist bump with the other hand. “Millionaires gang.”

Kent laughs, shakes his head, and bumps back. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Am I?” Connor grins, teeth stained as red as his shirt, and drinks from the bottle. “I’ve heard that’s what you look for in a friend.”

Kent doesn’t immediately connect the dots. “What?”

Connor grins conspiratorially, emboldened by the alcohol. “Is it too early to ask you about Jack Zimmermann?”

Kent stares at him. “Uh,” he says, feeling his mouth go dry. “I mean, what’s there to ask?”

Connor runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Not to be on some hipster shit, but I followed his career super close,” he says. “Obviously everybody was expecting him to go pro, right, and so did I. And I wanted to go pro, too, like every other fucking kid in the world, but I was trying to be smart about it. I was trying to follow guys that were headed towards where I wanted to be. I got, like, obsessed with growing my game the same way he did. Like, I thought that if I did all the same shit, I’d end up in the same place, you know? And it made way more sense for me to follow somebody current than somebody who made it happen ten years before I started trying, because they were up against a different set of expectations. I tried to forget about the NHL guys and start looking at my peers, you know? So I was tracking the best people in junior hockey. You and Jack were the only ones worth following, to be honest.”

“You did pretty well for yourself,” says Kent. He can’t tell if he’s sour on Jack’s behalf or not.

Connor shrugs. “I was just doing what I needed to do,” he says. “I knew I needed to get drafted into the Q, so I did. I knew I had to stack fucking numbers to get drafted into the NHL, so I did.”

Kent laughs, almost disbelieving. “You’re saying that like it’s easy,” he says.

“What, it wasn’t easy for you?” Connor looks genuinely amused. “You’re the best in the world, like—”

“Nothing was easy for me,” says Kent, and he means it. “Not back then.”

Connor is quiet for a moment, seeming to sense his overstep. “No, I get that,” he says. “I mean, I know your whole — situation.”

“What the hell is my ‘situation’?”

Connor takes a long drink straight from the bottle. Kent narrows his eyes. “Don’t stall,” he says.

“All right, all right.” Connor makes a show of placing the bottle very carefully on the coffee table. “I just mean I know you came from a certain type of background, like, you weren’t the kind of kid who was on travel teams and shit growing up.”

“I bet you were,” says Kent, as non-combatively as possible.

Connor shrugs. “I mean,” he says, “yeah. But, like, you made it anyway, and I figured — it must have been so fucking obvious how good you were if somebody scouted you from that kind of deal.”

Kent shrugs. “I just played good enough hockey that people couldn’t ignore me. That was my whole plan, start to finish. I obviously did as much as I could to market myself, but, like, I knew that if I could just get people out to see me play, they’d take me.”

“You’re avoiding the question, though,” says Connor, and stretches out to prop his legs up on the coffee table.

Kent blinks. “What’s the question?”

“I was asking you about Jack.”

“That’s not a _question,_ that’s—”

Whiskey shrugs. “All I’m saying is, I followed him close enough that I basically had to follow you, too. And I know you guys were really close back then.”

“Everyone knew we were close,” says Kent. “That was kind of the whole deal.”

Connor eyes him. “Right,” he says. “I’m just saying, like, I just wanna know — is it true that Jack Zimmermann’s kind of an asshole?”

“Yes,” says Kent, immediately, and he gives the answer without a trace of guilt. It’s the same answer he would have given back when he and Jack were friends, too, or more than friends, or whatever it was that they were to each other. It is just an unavoidable truth. Jack is a hockey star, and a history nerd, and an asshole. He would have said it to his face. In retrospect, he's almost sure that he _has_ said it to his face before.

“But you like him,” says Connor. Kent isn’t sure what he means, exactly, so he chooses to take it at face value.

“We were friends,” Kent says. “Best friends.”

Connor watches his face carefully for a moment before speaking. “You’re not anymore?”

Kent averts his eyes. It’s an obvious move, an opaque tell, but he can’t help it. “I guess not,” he says. “Just — some shit went down, that’s all. He’s a good guy and everything, it was just — things were complicated back then and they’re complicated now.”

“So you don’t talk to him anymore?”

Kent shakes his head, and he can feel his face growing red. It feels like a betrayal, the heat creeping up his neck, staining his cheeks as red as the wine on Connor’s shirt.

Connor leans forward and grins. “Is it because he’s an asshole?”

Kent looks up. He laughs, in spite of himself. “Kind of,” he says. “But I’m an asshole too, and I know that.”

Connor looks incredibly satisfied. “Asshole gang,” he says. Kent fist bumps him.

\--

“Hey,” says Connor, slowly, after the early-morning sun has begun to glint weakly through the curtains, after the wine has worn off for the most part. “Sorry if I was being weird before.”

Kent, curled up and half-asleep against a throw pillow, peers at him with bleary vision. He can already feel a hangover pushing against the backs of his eyes. “About what?”

“About Jack,” Connor says, and stretches out on the other wing of the L-shaped couch. “I guess I didn’t realize that you weren’t — that it might be a sore subject.”

Kent holds onto that for a moment before formulating a response that would make sense, that wouldn’t betray any more about their situation than Jack might appreciate, even if Jack might never know that he said anything about him at all. “No worries, man,” he says, finally, voice groggy from sleeplessness. “It all went down a while ago. I actually — I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

Connor watches him carefully, sweeping his gaze over Kent’s curled-up form under the Red Wings throw blanket. “I’m sorry about that,” he says.

“It’s okay,” says Kent, even though it’s not. As he drifts, he says, “You actually remind me a lot of him.”

Connor lets out a bemused sound, something that is not quite a laugh but is not quite a scoff, either. “You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that,” he says, and smiles, “after you wake up, obviously.”

Kent hugs the pillow. He has always been a pillow-hugger; it’s soothing, and warm, and a functional shadow of companionship. “No,” he says, and Connor laughs for real this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a classic example of kent misinterpreting emotional cues because he ... has never had a stable emotional relationship with anyone ... cool cool cool
> 
> vote will they / won't they in the comments lmao
> 
> also, kent's vastly underselling the amount of work he had to do to get drafted into the q. i'll get into it later but anybody who follows sports at all knows that getting scouted (especially successfully) is extremely difficult even when you're in a reputable league, and kent was barely in a league at all. the thesis of kent's life is that he has the "X factor": he will pursue a singular goal like a bloodhound, scorched-earth policy shit, until he gets what he wants. he's humble about it, though, so people only realize how much he Works after they see it in action, which is part of why people (media, casuals) think he's entitled - it's not obvious that he doesn't just "get lucky" and it just looks like he's proud of getting a good dice roll in the game of life
> 
> oh also go read my jack/kent coraline au: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608959


	19. D1: party

The next day is a near-total loss. They wake up around noon; they get a delivery order of loaded fries and swear not to tell the team nutritionist; they finish _The Bachelor_ and start _Love & Hip Hop. _

The day after that, Connor rounds up their teammates for a backyard grill-out. It’s a housewarming as much as it is a welcome-to-Detroit and a team bonding opportunity. Kent hasn’t had much of a chance to meet the other players yet because of the homeward-bound scatter that occurs directly after the postseason ends; apart from that rushed greeting at the Joe Louis Arena over a month ago, Kent has only really found time to interact with Connor.

“You’ll like the guys,” Connor says, standing at the meat counter in the grocery store, waiting for the worker to wrap his steaks in paper and pass them over the glass. 

“Do you know them? I mean — you’ve only been here since June, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s a lot longer than you.”

“I guess so.” Kent drums his fingers on the shopping cart handle. “I mean, I’m not worried about liking them or not liking them.”

“Yeah, you are,” Connor says, with a needling grin. “You told me the other day how fucking cagey everybody was in Vegas and how much you hated it there—”

Kent shrugs. “I mean, it wasn’t great,” he says, and tries to leave it at that.

“Everybody here lost their fucking minds when they announced the trade,” Connor says, and Kent can feel the intentionality behind his words: _we’re excited, we like you, we want you here._ “We were wilding out in the group text, like, I’ll show you later, it was actually embarrassing. We were like, ‘holy fuck, we’re actually gonna win games now’—”

Kent grins, rubbing his upper arm with a shaky hand. “Nice,” he says.

Connor’s eyes flick up and down as he gazes at Kent, trying to read the subtext in his terse posture. “It’s weird, though,” he says. “That it was like that for you. I believe you that it happened, I’m just saying that I can’t imagine — people shunning you like that over nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing, it was a bait-and-switch draft fuck-up,” says Kent. “They expected Jack and they got me. We’re both good, but we bring really different energy to the ice, and — instead of a natural-born leader, they ended up with some flashy idiot with a superiority complex.” He scratches the side of his jaw, letting his gaze drift away from Connor’s eyes. “And, like, the social stuff — it’s not a big deal, I’m used to it. That’s just how it goes sometimes.”

Connor furrows his brow. “That’s how _what_ goes? Hockey?”

Kent watches the man cutting their steaks, wishing that he would hurry up so that they could get back in the car and go home. He glances to his left, catching Connor’s eye again. Connor raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” Kent says. “I guess I just — I feel like I’m a fun guy, right, like, people have a good time when they’re around me, I’m funny, whatever, but people don’t seem to hang around when I’m not able to, like, hype them up or buy a round or whatever. Like, growing up I didn’t really have any friends from school because I was always playing hockey and I didn’t have any friends from hockey because no one there wanted to hang out in my neighborhood. And then in the Q it was the same, like, we joked around and partied and stuff but nobody really vibed with me. Except for—”

“Jack, yeah,” says Connor, and he bites his lip.

“Here you go,” says the man behind the counter, so Kent bites his tongue.

“Thanks,” says Connor. “I pay up front at the register, right?”

“Yeah,” says the guy. Connor nods and turns towards the cart, nestling the steaks between the ears of corn.

Kent pushes the cart down the chips-and-dip aisle, scanning for barbecue Lay’s. He feels odd, liminal almost, ruminating on his old life while preparing for the start of his new one.

“With Vegas,” says Connor, inspecting the label on a jar of spicy queso, “was it kind of the same thing?”

Kent nods. “Yeah. But, I mean, I was used to it, so it’s whatever. I wasn’t there to make friends. I was there to play hockey, you know?”

“I don’t know,” says Connor, skeptically, placing three jars of queso and a few bags of tortilla chips in the cart. “I mean, I’m at least a little bit ‘here to make friends’.”

“I guess,” says Kent, warily, sensing the aloof veneer that he has patched together over many years finally start to crack. 

He has always wanted to make friends, of course; he is naturally outgoing, incredibly social, fun at parties. It should be easy for him. And, yet, in every season of his life so far, whenever he had needed someone, _anyone,_ for anything at all, he had called out for help into an empty void — until Jack. Jack, himself a friendless outsider for very different reasons, had latched onto Kent’s sunniness, his joy, his ability to fill a whole space with nothing more than a grin. Kent had latched onto Jack right back, and that had been that. But then, of course, it had evaporated into thin air, and Kent had been left wanting.

“It’s nice when you like the people you’re out on the ice with, right?” Connor says, watching him.

Kent nods. It _is_ nice. Those early mornings at the rink with Jack, the months they spent perfecting the Zimmermann-Parson no-look one-timer, the moment that they had lifted the Memorial Cup in the Coliseum — it had all been nice. More than nice. It had been perfect, or so he had thought.

Connor puts a jar of pickles in the cart. “It’ll all work out,” he says, and he sounds genuine. “Tonight’s gonna give you the chance you need to make everybody be like, you know, how the fuck did we ever live without this guy around?”

Kent smiles, just a little. “Thanks, Connor,” he says, slightly sarcastic. “You’re thinking pretty deep for a guy who was begging me to buy Straw-ber-ritas on the ride here.”

“I’m just trying to butter you up with all this chit-chat,” Connor says. “Since I can’t buy them for myself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Kent, smiling a little more. “Makes sense.”

He puts a six-pack of Straw-ber-ritas in the cart.

On the way out of the store, Connor gives him a squeeze on the shoulder.

\--

“This is Veck,” says Connor, beer in hand. “You’ll like him, he’s some asshole from Quebec.”

Kent punches his arm, tipsy enough that the chirp doesn’t bury itself too deep in his heart. “Hey, man,” he says. 

“Hey,” says Veck. Their hands clap together in a forceful shake, and Kent grins. 

“Firm grip,” he says. He has had, medically speaking, too much to drink. 

Veck chuckles, shaking Kent’s hand. “I’m Theo Levesque,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you, finally, Parser. I was still visiting home when you got here, but it’s good to finally see the man himself.”

“Good to meet you,” says Kent. “I’m honestly so glad to be here, Detroit’s been amazing so far. I’ve been busy getting this house in order—” He gestures back across the lawn. “But I’m glad that we’re all here now, you know, getting to know each other.”

Veck nods. “It’s a nice place,” he says. “It’ll make your transition easier if you’ve got a nice place like this instead of some shitty apartment.”

“No doubt,” says Kent.

“If you ever need anything, just let me know,” Veck tells him, and Kent nods. “I’ve been here for a while, I’ve helped a lot of the new guys get settled in. My wife and I would be happy to have you over for dinner sometime.”

“I really appreciate that,” says Kent, and he means it. “Really.”

Kent chats with Veck, a thirty-something Quebecker with two kids and three dogs, for a few minutes before he has to cross the yard to pull the burgers off the grill. On his way there, he greets Nicklas Sandström (a Swedish fourth-liner called “Nicky”) and Liam Belanger (a Laval native who goes by “Bells”). Naturally, though, the oddest group were the goaltenders, a trio of dark-haired men each drinking one of Connor’s Straw-ber-ritas. They waved at Kent, and Kent waved back, but he knew better than to engage with goalies if he wanted to get the burgers flipped in time.

“Hey,” says Connor, bringing out paper plates from the kitchen. “How’s it looking?”

Kent presses the tongs against one of the burgers, and it drips red juice onto the charcoal, the flames spitting and sparking beneath the grate. “They look good,” he says.

“No, I mean — the party.”

Kent looks around at the dozens of people milling about on his deck, his front lawn, his circle drive (to get a good look at his newly-delivered cars, Kent suspects). “It’s great,” he says, and laughs, because he almost can’t believe it. “Thanks for suggesting this, man.”

“No problem,” Connor says, and smiles back. “Do the guys seem cool? Like, up to your standards, I mean?”

Kent laughs. “I don’t have any fucking standards, Connor,” he says. “But — yeah, no, they’re cool guys. I talked to, uh, I talked to Veck for a while and met a few of the other guys, and — I’ll probably go say hey to the goalies after this, since I don’t want our first interaction to be me scoring on them during scrimmages—”

“They’re fun,” says Connor. “Weird as fuck, obviously, but fun. See Bats, on the left? He drove me to my hotel from the rink on the first day, and he drives a Saturn. A _Saturn,_ dude.”

“Do they even make—”

“ _No._ And Barks, the guy next to him, has a snake named Juice Box because it’s a fucking straw, like, the snake is shaped like — Jesus Christ. Anyway, Beans is the only kind of normal one.”

“Beans?”

“Yeah, his team won the Beanpot the year he got drafted, so we call him Beans now.”

“Oh, right.”

Kent places the hamburger buns on the grill for toasting. He glances up over the grill, taking in the sight of his new team, his welcoming community, his fresh start. Connor smiles. “You starting to feel more at home?” he says, and Kent nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, this is good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the roster i drew up for this team, it's all fake people plus their fake nicknames. i haven't assigned "first line", "second line", etc. to people yet just because the coaches wouldn't have had a chance to sort all the placements out by late august, so i've just put A/B/C/D for ease of shuffling.
> 
> fun fact: "janet" is nicknamed after janet weiss from rhps, and "teeny" is the smallest d-man in the nhl
> 
> \--
> 
> Roster - Detroit Red Wings - 2014-2015 Season
> 
> line A center - Kent Parson - “Parse” / “Parser”  
> line A left wing - Connor Whisk - “Whiskey”  
> line A right wing - Liam Belanger - “Bells”  
> defense A1 - Davis Greenwell - “Davey”  
> defense A2 - Nicolas Dagenais - “Dash”
> 
> line B center - Theo Levesque - “Veck”  
> line B left wing - Mark Scholz - “Scholzy”  
> line B right wing - Jacob Weiss - “Janet”  
> defense B1 - Matt Holzmacher - “Matty”  
> defense B2 - Sergei Markov - “Marky”
> 
> line C center - Alexander Nyquist - “Snypes”  
> line C left wing - Tyler Greer - “Shots”  
> line C right wing - Joe Porowski - “Skeeter”  
> defense C1- Brian Marksman - “AK”  
> defense C2 - Pavel Mironov - “Pavs”
> 
> line D center - Nicklas Sandström - “Nicky”  
> line D left wing - Anders Eklund - “Elks”  
> line D right wing - Andrei Kamensky - “Mensker”  
> defense D1 - Henrik Steen - “Teeny”  
> defense D2 - Julian Johansson - “Julie”
> 
> goalie A - Riley Cave - “Bats”  
> goalie B - Taylor Barker - “Barks”  
> goalie C - Grayson Hull - “Beans”


	20. D2: old hurt

Over the last few days, Kent has learned another routine of Connor’s: he takes an inordinate amount of phone calls.

Kent thinks that this pattern makes some amount of sense, because Connor has family back in Arizona, and probably old friends there, too. But what doesn’t make sense is how often those phone calls coincide with Connor needing to rush out of the house to go to the grocery store or Planet Fitness or some other place, when they have a fully-stocked fridge (courtesy of the team nutritionist) and a custom home gym (courtesy of Kent’s insistence) and, really, anything else that Connor might need.

The back door creaks as Connor shuts it, coming in from the deck, phone in hand.

“Who was that?” Kent asks, and Connor shows him the call screen just before it fades out: _Hannah Green 💕 - Call Ended_.

“My girlfriend,” Connor says. “From back home.”

Kent feels something jolt inside his chest. “Oh, cool,” he says.

For some reason, he had not expected Connor to have a girlfriend, perhaps because Connor is so young, so far from home, so new to this place — or, perhaps, because Kent had been projecting too much of his own mind onto someone else’s, just like last time, when he had thought Jack would want to keep him forever just because he had wanted to hold Jack in his arms for as long as they both would live. He doesn’t want to make that mistake again; it had been his downfall once before, and he had learned, in the hardest way possible, that he was different than most people.

“She might come up to visit sometime,” says Connor, vague and noncommittal.

Kent nods. “I love company,” he says, and it’s the truth. “What’s she like, what’s she into?”

Connor sets his phone down on the coffee table and leans back against the couch cushions, on the perpendicular side of the L-shaped couch from Kent. “She goes to UC Berkeley,” he says. “So I guess she’s into books now, but that makes sense, because she was always smarter than me. Before, she was into — uh, just about anything, honestly. We met in school, and we started hooking up after we saw each other at the state fair, like, randomly. We were both bored out of our minds, walking around with our parents, you know? So we split off from them and just walked around making fun of everything we saw. We had seen each other at school and stuff, but we hadn’t ever really spoken before then, but it felt so natural, I can’t really explain it. And we ended up sort of — messing around behind one of the tents, like, she let me feel her up under her shirt while we made out, and after that, we just didn’t want to stop, I guess. After we started dating for real, we used to skateboard together, and she was so hot. We did tons of crazy shit together, like, when I wasn’t in Gatineau. Like, the two summers before I got drafted? Fuck.”

Kent smiles a little. He knows about the blissful freedom of naivety, the heady heat of summer, the way that a mere glimpse of someone’s thigh can send a boy’s head spinning. He likes that Connor knows about it, too. _All people should,_ Kent thinks. _It’s good for the soul._ “She sounds great,” Kent says. “Really fun. Is it hard being, you know, away from her, or is it kind of normal by now since you were in Gatineau and everything?”

“It’s hard,” says Connor. “It’s hard just because, like, I don’t know, we were pretty physical before, and that’s a really — it’s important to me to be able to be like that with somebody. And now — you know. We send pictures and videos and stuff, but it’s not the same.”

Kent laughs in spite of himself. “Damn.”

“I just sent her one, actually,” Connor says, and grins like a devil.

Kent laughs again, a little taken aback by Connor’s openness. “Like, from your camera roll, right? You didn’t just take one on our back deck, did you?”

Connor laughs. “No way."

Kent grins. "Thank God, man."

“I think she’s probably cheating on me,” says Connor, matter-of-factly.

“Jesus, dude,” says Kent, surprised. "What?"

Connor shrugs. “I’m not gonna ask,” he says. “I mean, like, it would suck or whatever. But if it’s happening, like — I don’t want to break up with her. I don’t know — I’d rather just not know, and then be able to see her when she’s on school breaks and stuff, and not have it be complicated like that.”

Kent chews his lip. “I guess that makes sense,” he says, but something about it tugs oddly at his ever-romantic heart.

Connor shrugs. “Like I said, it would suck. But I’m not really the kind of guy who sits around and worries about shit that might or might not be true.” He stands. “I’m gonna get a beer, you want one?”

“Yeah,” says Kent. “Thanks.”

As Connor leaves the room, his phone lights up from its place on the coffee table. Kent doesn’t _want_ to look, exactly, but his morbid curiosity gets the better of him. He glances at it, scanning the banked Snapchat notifications on Connor’s lock screen. 

[Snapchat] now

from Hannah💙🤤🥴

[Snapchat] 5m

from H a n n a h 👌 😈

[Snapchat] 9m

from hannah💖💦

[Snapchat] 14m

from Hannah😜🍑

[Snapchat] 22m

from hannahgreenUCB💕

At first, it makes sense. They had just talked about Hannah, about their practice of sending lewd pictures, about UC Berkeley. But then it dawns on him: if the notifications were all from the same person, they would all show the same display name.

Quickly, Kent gets with the program.

Connor had just sent a picture, he had just said so. To Hannah, ostensibly.

Now, five people were blowing up his phone, all saved in Connor’s phone as Hannah.

 _Clever,_ Kent thinks. _But still so fucking dumb._

He tries to sit still, but the creeping suspicion — no, the outright _knowledge_ — that Connor is the one cheating on _her_ begins to eat away at him far too quickly for him to calm himself into a state of inaction. He pushes up off the arm of the couch and corners Connor in the kitchen. “Does she know?” he demands.

Connor is still searching through the drawer for their bottle opener. “Huh?” he asks, distractedly. “Hey, do you know where the—”

“Does she know you have five girls saved in your phone under her name?” Kent snaps.

Connor’s shoulders tense up. _Got him,_ Kent thinks.

“Dude,” Connor starts, but Kent doesn’t let him finish.

“They all showed up on your lock screen,” he says. “All of them. You’re out here sending nudes to five different girls while your girlfriend is, like, a thousand miles away, missing you?”

“Dude, you don’t get it,” Connor tries again, but Kent’s sense of righteous anger is boiling over.

“You’re a piece of shit,” he says, and Connor flinches at the way he spits it at him. “If you think you’re hot shit just because you signed some fucking contract — that’s not it, bud—”

“Bro, hold—”

“I don’t want to hear your fucking—”

“It’s not like that!” Connor yells, slamming the drawer shut. “Get the fuck out of my face about my fucking business, Kent, why do you even care so much? You don’t even know what you’re—”

“Yes I _do,_ I saw your—”

“Who gives a _fuck_ what you saw?”

“I do!” Kent yells back, physically blocking Connor from storming through the archway and into the hall. “Look, I’ve been that person, okay, I’ve been the person who gets sidelined for more convenient people, so — all I can say is — you’re a piece of shit if you don’t own up to it, if you don’t quit playing around with people’s feelings, and—”

“Dude, shut the fuck up,” says Connor, sounding more tired than angry now. “I don’t want to hear about your fucked-up relationship with some Vegas showgirl who pretended to want you for something besides the money. Let me out, I wanna go upstairs.”

“What, so you can send another picture of your dick to five _more_ girls?”

“So I can _call_ her,” says Connor, pushing at Kent’s shoulder. “Move, let me take care of it, I swear to God—”

Kent lets himself be shoved to the side, but only because the sizzling electricity in his veins is starting to dull down into painful sparks, sharp reminders of his own pathetic adolescent pain. Once Connor has disappeared up the stairs, Kent sinks to the floor, back up against the wall, and holds his head in his hands. He can’t get it out of his head, the way he had felt when the same thing had happened to him.

\--

“Hey,” says Jack, that familiar, soft teasing tone to his voice, laying beside Kent on the double bed in the basement of his billet house. He’s propped up on his side, head resting on his hand, with Kent laying on his back, his side against the soft fabric of Jack’s crewneck sweatshirt. “Kiss me.”

Kent grins, like he always does, and obliges, like he always does. It’s sweet; he feels like he’s the fun, bold Lizzie to Jack’s awkward, dopey Gordo. “You’re cute,” he says, and Jack grins, embarrassed. “Have you ever seen _The Lizzie McGuire Movie?”_

“No,” says Jack, eyes lingering on Kent’s mouth in a way that makes Kent all too aware that Jack has stopped listening to what’s coming out of it.

“It’s good,” says Kent, feeling the shaggy hair at the nape of Jack’s neck. “We should watch—”

“Kiss me again,” says Jack, and Kent grins _big._ He kisses him again.

“We could watch it when we get back from Halifax on Sunday,” Kent says. “If you want to.”

“I can’t,” says Jack. “We could watch it on the bus, though, if we can sit together.”

“Of course we’re gonna sit together, who else — wait, what are you doing on Sunday? Are we not hanging out?”

“I have a date,” Jack says, and his cheeks are pink. 

Kent’s stomach _drops._

Jack doesn’t look the least bit hesitant to tell him, the boy he’s been kissing for months; he’s just embarrassed that he’s having feelings, again. “With Abby, the girl from—”

“From Jonah’s party,” Kent says, quiet, like all the breath has been knocked out of him.

“Yeah,” says Jack, his ears flushed, too, now. “I asked her to go to Tims so we’re—”

Kent feels absolutely frantic. “You asked her to _Tims?”_

“Yeah?”

“Jack, _we_ go to Tims, you can’t take her to—”

Jack looks confused. “Lots of people go to Tims, Kent,” he says. “It’s a national chain.”

Kent feels his Adam’s apple bob over the lump rising in his throat. “Tims is _our_ place, though,” he says, pathetically, and Jack furrows his brow.

“Okay, I’ll take her to Starbucks,” he says, and it sounds so stupid in his accent. Kent, impulsive and wounded, tells him so.

“It sounds so fucking stupid when you say that word,” he says.

Jack’s brow furrows again. “Sorry.”

“Don’t fucking _apologize—”_

“Okay, okay, sorry — Jesus. Okay.” Jack rolls onto his back, letting the air in his lungs leave him in the form of an irritated huff. They lay in silence like that for a while, Kent fighting back tears, Jack undoubtedly wondering what on Earth could possibly be bothering Kent so much. Kent could practically feel frustration rolling off Jack in waves. Finally, Kent pushes the lump in his throat down enough to speak.

“Do you like her?” he asks, afraid of the answer.

“Maybe,” says Jack. “I don’t know yet.”

Kent squeezes his eyes shut, gripping the sheet with the hand that’s not next to Jack. He tries to push the nausea down; he tries to keep the tears from brimming. “Are you going to kiss her?” he manages, and the dread clenched around his heart grips tighter.

“I kissed her at Jonah’s party,” Jack says, nonchalantly. “I told you I was going upstairs, remember?”

Kent flies up into a sitting position, rounding on Jack. “You already kissed her?”

Jack sits up too, just to level the power dynamic between them. “I _told_ you, man—”

“I thought you were going up to the bathroom to take a pill or something!”

Something about that sets Jack’s teeth on edge; Kent can see a muscle in his jaw jump. “I don’t need to take my pills in secret, Kent, they’re _prescription—”_

“Oh, right,” Kent says sarcastically, hardly in his own head enough to care that he’s taking this whole thing a step too far. “Right, right, three to six a day, just like it says on the bottle, right, Jack?”

“Shut the fuck up,” says Jack, getting heated, now, too. “What’s _wrong_ with you?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” says Kent, only because he feels the tears welling up now, and if he says anything further, they’ll spill over, and then Kent will have to cry in front of Jack like a _girl._ He can’t let that happen. He’s spent months quietly pitching to Jack all the perks of him _not_ being a girl, and he can’t afford to undercut that now.

“Clearly not, since you’re not making any sense,” Jack says, tersely.

“Forget it,” Kent snaps, swinging his legs off the bed. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“Good,” says Jack. “Cool off, you’re pissing me the fuck—”

Kent slams the door. He doesn’t quite make it into the shower before the tears fall, but it’s all right. Jack can’t see him anymore; Jack won’t know that he’s _sad,_ not angry. Anger is much easier to explain away, later, once the fleeting moment has passed. And, besides, there’s not enough room for _both_ of them to be sad sacks at the same time. Jack has that energy monopolized.

When he lets himself back into the bedroom, Jack is on his laptop, watching tape.

“Hey,” says Kent.

“Hey,” says Jack.

Kent sighs. “I’m sorry for being an asshole,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Jack tells him, without pushing for details.

Kent leans against the doorway, pulling at the sleeves of his borrowed sweatshirt. “Can I still stay here tonight?”

Jack nods. Kent joins him on the bed, nestling his head against his shoulder, and half-watches the fuzzy rink footage of them sailing across the ice, passing, shooting, scoring. Eventually, he closes his eyes, just for a moment, just because the light from Jack’s computer is so bright.

“You know,” Jack says, just as Kent is starting to doze off on his shoulder, “you don’t have to worry about me not making time for you. You’re always going to be my best friend. I’m never going to let a girl come between us like that.”

“Okay,” says Kent, even though that isn’t the problem. It’s just easier this way, and he’s too tired to pick another fight.

“Okay,” Jack says. “Here, lie down, get comfortable. Let me hold onto you.”

Kent had always been the little spoon. Jack had always been the only one who could make him feel safe, and calm, and loved, even after a fight.

\--

Sitting on the cold tile of his kitchen floor, listening to the low murmur of Connor’s phone conversation through the ceiling, Kent feels numb.

That hadn’t been the last time that Jack had taken the bait with girls. He had always been drawn to them, like most of the other boys on Kent’s team, in his class at school. But Kent had never seen what Jack had seen in girls. They were nice, obviously, and Kent didn’t exactly have a problem with any of them, except for a few of the awkwardly-demanding puck bunnies who asked for autographs at their junior hockey games.

But Jack had eyed them up, the blondes, the petite girls who looked nice in skirts. Kent had started to notice just as the newness of their friendship had started to wear off, just as Jack had felt secure in the fact that Kent was going to stick around, just as he had felt that he could take his eyes away from Kent without him disappearing entirely. It had made Kent’s stomach feel uneasy, but he had tried to put it out of his mind; he had tried to just focus on Jack, and how good it felt to finally have someone to talk to.

Jack’s shyness got the better of him for almost the entirety of their first year in the Q. Jonah or Marc or someone else equally nosy would ask him, “What do you think of her?”, and point to a girl across the room at one of their house parties. Jack would say, “She’s pretty,” and then, “She’d never go for someone like me,” and leave it at that. Jonah or Marc or someone else equally nosy would then, predictably, round on Kent.

“What do _you_ think of her, Parser?”

“Seven out of ten,” Kent would say, crassly, just to get them to fuck off. “Maybe a six, if I wasn’t so fucking blasted.”

“Why don’t you go talk to her, if Zimmermann’s too much of a—”

“I don’t talk to people who drink Natty Light,” Kent would say, some snippy comment with thousands of variants, a thousand times each season. “That includes you, so get lost.”

Once the boys were out of sight, absorbed into the faceless throng in the center of the room, Jack would smile, weakly, nervously, and Kent would pinch his thigh with a grin.

“I never know what to say to them,” Jack would say.

“You just have to be an asshole, they’ll leave eventually.”

“No, not them. The girls.”

Kent would scan his face for any signs of regret. “Do you _want_ to talk to them?”

“Not really,” Jack would say, and Kent would smile. “I just want to talk to you.”

That had always made Kent’s heart _soar,_ until, of course, Jack had stopped saying it. Until, like everyone else but Kent, Jack had worked up enough courage to start talking to the girls. And, apparently, _kissing_ them.

Kent had tried to push the fear down, to focus on him and Jack and nothing else, but it had been hard to think that it was just _him and Jack and nothing else_ when Kent was alone at his billet house and Jack was at Tims, _their_ Tims, with Abigail Tremblay — and _not_ him.

It had been easier, Kent imagines, for Jack to date girls, to cover his ass, to create some plausible deniability about what happened behind the locked doors that they always managed to find at parties. In fact, Kent's almost sure that Jack's habit for sneaking upstairs to hook up with Kent is what started the Jack-Zimmermann-is-a-cocaine-addict rumor. Kent had felt sad about it, then, that everything they did had to be hidden away, that it was infinitely less complicated, less loaded, for Jack to kiss girls than it was for Jack to kiss him.

But, whenever Jack came back from his dates, Kent still let him crawl into his bed, still let him kiss Kent to sleep, still let him wake him up after a dream and say _hey, Kenny, could you—,_ still let him get Kent under the covers to give Jack what he wanted, what they both wanted. God, he had wanted it so badly, wanted Jack to want him, wanted it all to work out.

To this day, he isn’t sure what he had done wrong, what the final straw had been, but Kent suspects that, perhaps, he wasn’t petite enough, wasn’t sweet enough, wasn’t soft enough. 

Now that Kent knows, thanks to Bob’s offhand comment on his SportsNet podcast, that Jack and Camilla Collins are an item, he feels that this theory is all but confirmed.

\--

Kent, still on the kitchen floor, thunks his head back against the wall. Thinking about Connor, his new friend, a _good guy,_ cheating on his long-distance girlfriend makes Kent feel sick. He probably shouldn’t have blown up at him like that, but he had told the truth: he did know what it felt like to be extra, to be secret, to be dead last on someone’s romantic priority list. Back then, Kent had dealt with it, because protesting would have made Jack pull away, and then he wouldn’t have had anyone at all. But now, Kent can’t stand watching someone use someone else the way that Jack had used him, knowingly or not. He wonders if Connor really is as good of a guy as Kent had thought he was. The idea that he might not be, that Kent’s new friendship might fizzle out before it really gets a chance to truly spark, makes him feel even sicker.

\--

Connor avoids Kent for the rest of the evening, and half of the morning the next day. When he finally faces him, Kent thinks he looks exhausted.

“I didn’t mean to get in your face about it,” Connor says, without bothering to contextualize his statement, because Kent obviously knows what he means. “I just don’t — I’m a private guy.”

“Sure,” says Kent, not entirely smoothed out just yet. “Me too. I get it.”

“I don’t like when people get into my business.”

Kent furrows his brow. “I’m your friend, right?”

“Yeah, but you’re not my keeper,” Connor says, and sighs, stopping himself before his voice starts to rise.

“I’m just saying,” says Kent, “you’re a young guy. I’m not, like, ancient compared to you, like, I’m not trying to be a prude about shit. I’m just saying, I’ve been there, on the other end of it, and it sucked. And it sucks to watch you do that shit without giving a fuck, man.”

Connor studies his face for a moment. “Can we get past this?” he says. “Like, come on.”

“Connor—”

“She knows,” Connor says, abruptly, and Kent can’t tell if he’s lying or not. “It’s an arrangement we have. It’s cool.”

Kent can’t read Connor’s expression, so he gives in, because protesting would make Connor pull away. He doesn’t like when people pull away; he’s trying to learn what to do to make them stay for once. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry. I assumed, I guess.”

“No, that makes sense,” says Connor, and grips Kent’s shoulder. “Let’s just — leave it.”

“Consider it left,” says Kent, and Connor nods.

Kent feels guilty, and pushy, and bad. “Hey,” he says, trying to bridge the awkward silence. “Do you wanna watch _The Lizzie McGuire Movie?”_

“No way,” Connor says, and Kent blinks, but then Connor presents him with a counter-offer that he can’t refuse. “The best Hillary Duff movie is obviously _Cadet Kelly,_ so we have to watch that first.”

Kent lets a grin overtake him. “Cool,” he says. “I’m down.”

\--

That night, Connor leaves again, but he comes back with someone after Kent has already gotten into bed. He hears Connor say, “my roommate’s probably sleeping,” and “shut up, shut up, shut up,” and “you can stay over, but only if you kiss me like that again,” and Kent squeezes his eyes shut, trying to shove those old feelings down again from where they’re bubbling up, mean and ugly, somewhere around his diaphragm.

_Hurt, anger, jealousy._

Kent turns over and shoves himself against his pillows, trying to ignore the sound of Connor’s headboard hitting the wall over and over again, erratically. His phone lights up on his nightstand, some pointless _News for you_ bulletin from his Twitter app.

Kent pauses.

He gets a bad idea.

He yanks his phone off the charger and nestles back under his covers with it.

[1:24 am] hey zimms

[1:24 am] i tried to call you the other month but you didnt pickg up

[1:25 am] pick*

[1:27 am] im in detroit now. things are better. i had dinner with yout dad and he was cool as usual

[1:42 am] i know your going to ignore these but im lonely adn i miss you

[1:43 am] do u have snapchat?

[1:43 am] add me its bartsnipeson

They’re in the same time zone now. It’s strange to think about Jack looking at his phone and seeing the same numbers that Kent is seeing. He’s not sure why; he knows how clocks work. It’s more just that Jack has been so distant from him since the draft, and now, it almost feels like he’s within reach, like Kent could stretch out his arm and touch Jack’s hand under the covers, just like he used to do.

He wonders, metaphorically, if Jack would pull away.

[1:58 am] i still think about you all the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a long spicy one now that we've hit ch20! we'll hit 50k next time AND get some even spicier details about whiskey's hookup(s)
> 
> also, yes, everyone in this chapter is lowkey an obtuse asshole and i don't agree with any of the choices that these stupid boys make
> 
> PS - do connor and hannah actually have an "arrangement" or was that just a lie to get kent off his back? we'll see!


	21. D3: realizations

Kent pretends to sleep in the next morning, just to give Connor time to usher the girl out of their house without being seen. He knows that it’s normal for guys to have girls over, that Kent really shouldn’t be making it into something secretive and hidden and strange, but he worries that Connor will blow up at him again for _getting in his business_ if he makes an appearance before the girl is gone.

So, he stretches out under the warm covers, checks his texts (no Jack), watches a few gachapon hauls on YouTube, and waits.

\--

It seems like, from what Kent can tell, that things are back to normal. They spend the day painting the shed out back, where they plan to keep their extra hockey gear during the offseason, and Kent changes the oil in Connor’s black SUV. Connor is on his phone just as much as he was the day before, but Kent doesn’t bother him about it. They order dinner from a burger place down the road, and Connor uncaps a few beers for them. Kent turns Netflix on and settles on the other end of the L-shaped couch from Connor.

“We could keep going with _Love and Hip Hop_ or start the new season of _The Bachelor,_ what do you wanna do?”

Connor shrugs. “Up to you, man.”

“We could watch _Goon,_ if you’re gonna be a noncommittal jock about it,” says Kent, and grins.

“Who taught you how to pronounce ‘noncommittal’, jock?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Things are definitely back to normal.

\--

The next morning, groggy and yawning, Kent heads down the hall to knock on Connor’s door before his shower. Now that training camp is just a few weeks away, he has been attempting to rouse him before ten, at the very least, since Connor won’t abide the five o’clock wake-up times that Kent himself prefers. He hasn’t succeeded _routinely,_ yet, but the rustling behind Connor’s door as he approaches feels promising. Kent raises a hand to knock on the door.

He stops.

He hears voices.

“I want you to come for me,” says the boy in Connor’s bed.

Kent can hear Connor’s quiet laugh through the door. “You have to _make_ me come,” he says. “I can’t just do it on demand. You’ve gotta work for it.”

Kent backs away from the door. _Holy shit._

He stands in the hall, heart hammering, legs locked in place. _I should not have heard that,_ he thinks. _I should not be here right now._

So, he leaves. He creeps quietly past the door, slides a folded towel out from the top shelf of the linen closet, and makes a break for the bathroom. Once he’s safe behind a locked door and the spray of the showerhead, he turns over this new revelation in his mind. 

He should have known that Connor might have someone over. He should have known, because someone had stayed over the night before, and Connor had gone into the city last night, and Kent had gone to bed before Connor’s car had pulled back into the driveway. 

He’s not sure if he should have known that it would be a _guy._

Kent has never confronted this state of affairs in anyone but himself before — well, himself and Jack, naturally. He isn’t even sure what to do with the information, apart from keeping it entirely to himself. Back then, Jack had insisted on absolute secrecy, and Kent had readily agreed. They had been headed to the NHL, and they hadn’t needed any damaging gossip clogging the lines of their legacy-builder: the steady stream of positive press. 

But what if Connor was different? What if Connor would want to _talk_ about it, connect with someone, vent to a third party? The precedent has been set that Connor is willing to talk about sex, about people he’s been with, because they had talked about Hannah and what she and Connor used to do together. But Kent isn’t sure whether or not that openness extends to men or not.

What if Kent would have to pretend not to know, or care, or understand? What if Kent couldn’t risk letting Connor in on his own secret, but also couldn’t bear to watch Connor struggle to maintain a sense of privacy, unsupported and alone? _Well, he’s not exactly alone right now—_

“Kent,” says Connor, rapping his knuckles on the bathroom door after what feels like five minutes but must actually be closer to twenty. “Hurry up, I wanna take a shower and my shampoo is in there.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kent shouts, jolting out of his trance. “Okay, fuck off, give me five minutes.”

\--

Around ten or eleven, Kent comes up from their basement gym, sweating and dehydrated and hungrier than he has ever been in his life. He pulls one of the BlenderBottles down from the cabinet and dumps a scoop of protein powder in the bottom.

He hears Connor coming down the stairs just as Kent reaches for the Brita filter.

He looks up, like an idiot, and realizes, all at once, that this is a _problem._ He also realizes, in a panic, that it’s too late to hide.

Through the kitchen archway, he locks eyes with Connor, and, perhaps more importantly, with Connor’s hook-up.

Connor pales, frozen at the foot of the stairs.

“I’ll see you,” says the guy, realizing that this is a sensitive situation. “My Uber’s down by the road. I’ll—”

“Bye,” says Connor, without looking at him, without looking away from Kent.

The door shuts, and the house falls silent.

“Hey,” says Kent, awkwardly.

“I thought you were in the gym,” Connor says, slowly. “I thought you’d be in the — in the gym.”

“I came up,” Kent says, apologetically, and lifts the BlenderBottle in his hand to prove it.

Connor looks like he might throw up. Kent knows that feeling, knows it all too well.

“It’s okay,” Kent starts to say, but Connor interrupts him, fierce and firm.

“Don’t tell anyone.”

Kent nods. “I’d never say anything to anybody,” he says. “You can trust me, man.”

Connor’s panicked-prey stare is boring holes into Kent’s skull. “You were pretty nosy about it the other night,” he says, guarded.

“Yeah, about the cheating,” says Kent, defensively. “I don’t give a fuck that you slept with a _guy,_ just that you slept with — you know, someone other than your girlfriend.”

Connor stares at him. “So you’re more concerned for Hannah, who you’ve never even fucking met, than you are for me, your _friend,_ who has to hide who he’s sleeping with because—”

“This guy isn’t the whole problem, Connor, like, it’s obviously part of it, but I was mad about all the other girls you were—”

Connor raises his eyebrows.

It dawns on him. “Oh,” he says. “They weren’t girls, were they? On Snapchat?”

Connor shakes his head.

“Oh,” Kent says, again. “Right.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Connor says. “That’s just how it is for me right now. I can’t explain it, I don’t want you to try to make it your fucking problem.”

Kent nods. “Okay,” he says. “What _do_ you want?”

Connor bites his lip. “I want you to leave me alone,” he says. “No offense.”

“No, I get that,” says Kent, and means it. Kent has never wanted to be anyone’s mentor. “I’ll leave you alone about it. I won’t ask stupid questions. I’ll try to give you as much space as I can, like, privacy, you know.”

Connor nods. “Okay,” he says.

Kent scrubs the side of his face. “Listen,” he says, uncomfortable. “You should probably know, like—”

Connor’s frustrated, pinched expression opens up, just a little. “What?” he asks.

“I can hear your bed frame hitting the wall sometimes,” Kent says. “So, I mean, maybe move it forward a couple of inches.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Connor, flushed, and turns to rush back up the stairs, to barricade himself in his room for the rest of the afternoon.

“And — hey, listen, for real.”

Connor looks at him over his shoulder. _“What,_ dude?” he says, irritated, embarrassed that this conversation is still happening, that Kent is still meeting his eyes, that he is still vulnerable and _known._

Kent runs a hand over his cowlick, too self-aware in this moment. “You have come in your hair, like — ” He points to his own temple. Connor’s hand flies up to his head, feeling it to confirm, covering it up.

_“Jesus Christ—”_

He bolts up the stairs.

Kent shakes his protein drink up and chugs it, trying not to think about how much he misses what Connor’s getting.

\--

It takes a few days for the shame to start wearing off, but Connor warms back up to Kent over a few drinks and a rerun of _Desperate Housewives._

“I was thinking about going out tonight,” Connor says, testing the waters about how much Kent is willing to engage with him about what they both know, how willing Kent is to be normal about it all. “But this is nice.”

Kent glances up from his phone and smiles a little. “Where do you go, anyway? If you’re going to bars and clubs and stuff, that’s — not exactly discreet since we’re in a hockey city, you know?”

Connor smiles a little. “Straight guys always ask me stupid questions like that,” he says. “Like, they’re always way too curious about where guys meet each other, you know?”

Kent feels his cheeks flush. He hopes that Connor will chalk it up to the drinks rather than the statement. “Are they?”

“Yeah,” says Connor, and sips his beer. “I always tell them, you know, ‘I meet them just like I’m meeting you right now.’ Then they end up coming home with me.”

“Jesus,” Kent says, eyebrows raised. “Is it that easy? To get straight guys to—”

“Why, you want to try it sometime?” Connor asks, easy, casual. Kent averts his eyes.

“That’s not—”

“You know,” says Connor, harnessing the comfortable confidence that Kent is used to, its return making Kent apprehensive about the direction of this conversation. “When I was following you and Jack back in the day, like, there were lots of people who thought—” 

“People had a lot of stupid shit to say about us,” Kent says, because he’s used to responding to jabs about Jack. “That, and, you know, Jack being into coke, and—”

“Was he not?” Connor asks, looking genuinely surprised. “I always figured everyone in the Q was into coke. It was always around.”

“Well,” says Kent. “I mean, yeah. But Zimms wasn’t, like, really into it. Not like how people thought he was.”

Connor watches Kent’s expression. “What about you?” he asks, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth.

“What, was I into coke?”

“Yeah.”

Kent runs a hand over the back of his neck. “It wasn’t a problem for me,” he says. “But, I mean, we all tried it in the Q, just a handful of times. And I probably did it more than I should have in my rookie year. I don’t do it anymore, though. Now, it’s — I mean, I still drink too much, but it’s not a huge deal, not like how it used to be.”

Connor nods. “It’s always something,” he says. “I can’t imagine getting through the Q if you’re not, like, doing _something_ to keep you sane.”

Kent laughs, leaning back against the couch cushions. “What was it for you?”

“Sex,” Connor says, and grins. “And, you know, I smoked weed. I tried coke a few times, but I feel like it made me crazy.”

“Yeah, it does that,” says Kent. “Fuck, it’s been so long since I’ve smoked, though.”

Connor nods again, running a hand through his hair. “I was never, like, into it,” he says. “But if it was at parties, you know, I didn’t really ever say no.”

Kent grins. “Are you the kind of kid who thinks it’s still cool to talk about how fucked up you used to get at high school parties?” he asks, and Connor grins, shaking his head in exasperation.

“I guess I am now, man. The good old days.”

Kent laughs. “I used to think I was invincible when I was in the Q, you know, like, I never saw any real impact on my game, just because I was smart about it. Jack was really worried about us going down that road when we first started playing together, like, I’m pretty sure that he thought I was a bad influence because I used to smoke cigarettes in high school.” He leans forward and sets his empty beer bottle on the coffee table. “But we played great no matter what, so who cares.”

“Yeah, and it ended so well for both of you,” Connor says, dryly. Kent feels a twist of guilt in his gut. He uncaps another beer.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he says, mumbly, his mood dampening. “I mean, I didn’t — I’m pretty positive that I had _something_ to do with it, just because I was there, because we were all doing crazy shit and I was never — like, I never called his mom and dad to rat on him or anything. But — I dunno. I wish — sometimes I wish I had, you know?”

Connor watches him for a moment, considering his words. “It was his anxiety meds, though, right?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, with a sigh. “Xanax. And — like, we all saw him taking them, we just didn’t know — or at least, I didn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t realize until later that he was only supposed to be taking, like, four milligrams a day. And it’s not like any of us were counting.”

Connor nods. “I don’t see how it could have had anything to do with you,” he says. “Honestly, I knew a lot of guys with problems like that, you know, pills or coke or whatever it was. And, like I said, you know, I honestly don’t know how any of us could have made it through junior hockey without — like, it’s so brutal, and normal people don’t understand. Like, people watch our games and cheer us on and write all these pieces about, you know, he could have had a harder shot, or, like, he missed that scoring opportunity in the third, and they don’t realize that we’re getting yelled at by the coaches, yelled at by our agents, getting told how to play and what to do five different ways from five different people — and we’re, like, you know, sixteen years old. We’re kids, away from home, no support system. Like, how the fuck were we supposed to cope with that?”

Kent nods, taking a drink and stretching out a little, propping himself up on the arm of the couch to face Connor. “It was hard,” Kent says. “And I feel like I’m a pretty no-nonsense guy, like, I had nothing to be homesick for and no one to miss. I was there to _work,_ and that’s it. I always told myself that I didn’t give a shit what my coaches thought of me because I knew I was putting numbers up, but, like, Jesus Christ. It was so hard to feel okay with myself sometimes. I know Zimms had it worse than me, you know? Like, he took everything to heart more than I did. He had a lot more on his shoulders, I guess. But there were a few times, like, I definitely cried in the showers after a bad practice or a meeting with the coach. When Jack would get yelled at like that, he’d just shut down for, like, hours, or _days,_ sometimes. It was so hard to keep him afloat.”

Kent picks at the label on his beer bottle, remembering the fear that was so ever-present in Jack’s eyes when he was sober, the way he would stare at himself morosely in the mirror, delivering what must have been a silent-but-vicious dressing-down of himself in his own head, while Kent waited for him to join him in their motel-room bed. “But Jack was different. He tried to do things the right way, not like the rest of us. He went to a doctor, you know? He talked to somebody. He did all the right things. He had fun or whatever, but — you know, he had his head on straight. At least he did, like, compared to me. But he ended up — you know, being the scapegoat, just because he fucked up _one time._ And then the whole world was, like, you know, sanctimonious as fuck, you know, ‘these kids shouldn’t be involved in blah blah blah, they should think about their future careers,’ as if Jack did anything but think about his _future career,_ right? As if he was the bad one, the worst of the worst, some entitled piece of shit legacy kid who partied too hard and fucked his life up because of it. It’s so fucking unfair that he took the fall for it, just because everyone _saw_ what he did. Like, he got fucking raked over the coals while the rest of us had spent the last two years getting high for fun and sneaking alcohol on the bus and doing a bunch of shit that we had no business doing. And Jack had to suffer for it, like, he still suffers for it. People _still_ can’t shut up about it.”

He rips the rest of the beer label off. When he tosses it to the ground, Purrs immediately chases it under the couch.

Connor’s eyes track over Kent’s face, his own expression solemn and contemplative. “It sounds like you were there for him, though,” he says. “It sounds like you were as good of a friend as you could have been, given the circumstances.”

Kent shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t know.”

“Do you miss him?” Connor asks, after a while. “Or is it, you know, bad memories?”

Kent feels his chest constrict. He can’t lie. Honestly, he doesn’t even _want_ to lie. “I miss him so much,” he says, and it sounds as pained as he feels. “I literally miss him every second of every day. He was — everything to me. My first friend, my only friend, like, we did everything together. We wouldn’t — I wouldn’t have made the NHL if he hadn’t helped me climb the ranks, you know? But that’s not why we were — that’s not why. I didn’t even give a shit about hockey when I was with Jack.” He pauses. “Like, I _did,_ but — I just mean—”

“Like, hockey brought you together, but you never thought about hockey when you were hanging out with him?” Connor is watching Kent, his eyes shining.

“Yeah,” Kent says, dully, because that connection is gone now. It had snapped like a severed rope, sending Kent’s white sails flying up the mast in surrender. All he has left of Jack is hockey, the part of their relationship that, somehow, mattered the least. “Yeah. But now — now, it’s the other way around.” He pauses, picking at the hem of his sweatpants. “Now, when I play hockey, I think of him.”

Connor is silent for a long time. Kent is, too, and he hugs a throw pillow to his chest after a while, just for comfort. Finally, Connor’s soft voice cuts through the melancholy fog in the air.

“Did you love him?”

Kent looks at Connor. He knows that Connor can see it in his eyes, what he means, how he means it. “I do,” he says. “I still do.”

Connor nods. He rests against the cushions, staring at the _Are you still watching?_ screen on the television without making a move to confirm or deny. “And — you don’t talk anymore, you said? You told me the other day—”

“He dropped me,” says Kent, flatly. “After the draft. He wouldn’t answer my texts or pick up my calls or anything. So now — yeah, no, we don’t talk anymore.”

The import of that seems to settle into Connor’s expression. “Fuck,” is all he says.

“Yeah,” says Kent. “It was hard. But, honestly, one of the hardest parts is, like, you know. Feeling like you had somebody to take over the world with, and then — all of a sudden, like, you’re totally alone, and you have to do everything for the first time by yourself, and it’s all hard, and you don’t have parents you can call, and — you can’t tell anybody why you’re hurting, because it’ll just make things worse if people find out—”

“Yeah,” says Connor. “Jesus, I didn’t realize — when I was watching you that season, I didn’t realize that you were just — that it was like that. It looked like you were on fire.”

“That’s what everybody always says.” Kent picks at a thread on the throw pillow that he’s still hugging. “They always want to talk about — how well I handled it, how I won the Calder, how I filled Jack’s shoes better than he could have, you know. But I was fucking dying, dude. I was doing good on the ice because it was the only thing I had going for me, it was the only thing I _could_ do.”

Connor nods, sympathetic but not patronizing. “So that’s — are things better now?”

“I guess,” says Kent, and then he corrects himself. “Yeah, things are — things are better now. They’re manageable, at least. It still — hurts, and I still — feel — like, pretty isolated. But — I feel like — this team — you know, it’s what I needed. It just sucks that I can’t, you know, just tell people what’s going on and get it off my chest. I feel like I’ve been carrying this around for _years,_ man, like, I’ve never told anybody this much besides you, not even the therapist they sent me to in my first year.”

Connor takes that in, seemingly understanding the weight of his responsibility to hold Kent’s secret close, to tuck it away and keep it safe, like Kent is doing with Connor’s. “I know how you feel,” he says, eventually.

Kent hugs the pillow. He honestly doesn’t believe that Connor has any realistic idea of how he feels; kissing boys isn’t the only prerequisite for understanding what happened between himself and Jack. It’s the kind of thing that can only be lived through, survived, internalized. “Yeah,” he says, because he doesn’t want to sound like an asshole. “I wish I could tell you that it gets easier, man.”

“I know it won’t,” says Connor, matter-of-factly. “I don’t expect the NHL to be, like, some _safe space_ or something. I just want to do what I have to do on the ice and, like, keep everything else under wraps. It’s nobody’s fucking business but mine, you know?”

Kent smiles a little. “You’d better hope it stays that way,” he says. “I couldn’t do, you know, what you’re doing. With — guys. I’d have to have them sign an NDA, but in order to do that, I’d have to tell my lawyer to draft up some NDAs that include language about me sleeping with people, so that’s out.”

Connor laughs. “I hadn’t even thought about NDAs,” he says.

“I’ve got some basic template ones in a box somewhere, from the move,” says Kent. “I thought I’d use them, you know, at least as an intimidation thing, even if they wouldn’t hold up in court. But — uh, I haven’t really needed to.”

Connor smiles. “I can burn through them if you don’t want them,” he says. “Trust me.”

Kent nods, grinning a little, feeling much more at ease than he has in years. He had told someone, and it had been all right. He had told someone, and now they’re joking about it, like it’s normal. “I’ll bring them to you when I find them,” he says. “So you can keep them in your room or whatever.”

“Knock first,” Connor warns, grinning too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as of today, i've been writing this fic for a whole month, AND we've just hit 50k!! goal MET
> 
> also, some notes on the nhl and drug testing:
> 
> “The official line from the league and the players’ association before marijuana’s green dawn in Canada came into effect was, in summary: ‘Marijuana is on the list of substances that are subject to NHL drug testing. Results remain confidential unless a positive test is referred to the players-assistance program. Marijuana is not designated as a performance-enhancing drug, so a positive test result for marijuana does not in itself lead to a suspension.’  
> The practical takeaway: A player smoking a joint a day has almost nothing to worry about. A single positive test for marijuana remains confidential and will not be subject to a follow-up unless it reaches a near-toxic level.”


	22. D4: additions

The beginning of the regular season approaches as swiftly as the cold. Their first practice as a full team is demanding, to say the least. The coach is cycling through options for ultimate line optimization, which means that Kent skates passing drills with multiple variants of wingers for the better part of an hour. He is flushed, and shaking, and dripping with sweat, and he loves every second of it. This is his bread and butter, his proving grounds. Playing good hockey is the part that he has always known that he could do, and he is able to do it confidently, no matter what he’s given to work with.

After his locker-room shower, Kent perches in his stall and towels off his hair. He is  _ red, _ he can tell — from the heat of the shower, but also from his exertion out on the ice. He has always been pale, and it is never more obvious than times like this, when he looks like a boiled lobster compared to the other boys. His various sets of teammates have always chirped him for it, and the guys in this locker room seem to be no exception.

“Worked hard out there, today, Parser?” says Veck. “You look like hell.”

“You match the jersey,” says Bats, and laughs.

“Tomato boy,” says Connor. Kent swings at him, laughing, and Connor leaps out of the way.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Kent says, and Connor laughs too.

\--

“Hey,” says Connor, hovering at the archway into the living room. “Are you watching something?”

“Just tape,” says Kent. “Nothing crazy.”

Connor nods and comes to sit with him on the couch, although, this time, he doesn’t take his usual seat on the opposite wing. Instead, he settles in next to Kent, handing him a beer. “I figured we could order something for dinner, what do you want?” He holds his phone out for both of them to see as he scrolls through the delivery app’s front page, scanning for something that would fit their team’s meal plan.

“Not pizza,” says Kent. “I could do wings, or sandwiches, or salmon or something.”

“I don’t want to do salmon,” says Connor. “I don’t want to smell like fish.”

“Why, got a hot date later?”

“Maybe,” says Connor, coyly. “Let’s just do noodles.”

“Noodles it is,” says Kent. “I can put something else on TV if you don’t want to, you know, do work.”

“No, we can watch video,” says Connor, distractedly, as he plugs his specifications in on the app.

Kent laughs a little at their dialect divide. “Do you seriously not call it ‘tape’?”

“I’m not fucking old,” says Connor, as the order confirmation screen pops up. “Of course I don’t call it ‘tape’.”

Kent shakes his head, grinning. “I’m not that old,” he says.

“You’re old enough to call it ‘tape’, dude—”

“Lots of people do!”

“Old people do,” says Connor, and knocks shoulders with him. It’s nice; it’s friendly, and warm, and comfortable.

Kent knocks his shoulder back, harder this time. “You’re just lucky that you’re not old enough to have to start getting Botox, man.”

Connor looks up from his phone, laughter in his eyes. “Do you get  _ Botox, _ Parse?”

Kent shrugs, guilty. “I’m on TV all the time, I want to look good.”

“Who the fuck are you trying to impress?”

“Is it bad to want to look good for myself? I’m not the one with guys in my room every night.”

Connor grins. “I know you’re not,” he says. “It’s been a while since you’ve had anybody, hasn’t it?”

“None of your fucking business, Connor,” says Kent, mock-annoyed and grinning.

Connor scoffs. “Okay, but when I do it, it’s your business?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, poker-faced. “It’s my house. Everything that happens here is my business.”

“Sure, sure, whatever.” Connor sits closer, facing Kent more openly, his eyes conspiratorial and curious. “But it  _ has _ been a while, right?” 

There’s something in his tone that makes Kent pay attention. He wonders if he’s going to ask for advice, or tell him about his boy problems, or expect Kent to divulge as much to Connor as Connor has divulged to Kent. It has not escaped Kent’s notice that Connor is, however secretly, extremely invested in Jack Zimmermann. If Kent imagined Connor as just another fan, rather than a friend, he would expect him to want to know what went on between them, too. Honestly, he’s surprised that Connor hasn’t pushed more, cornered him for information, gotten him drunk during a game of Never Have I Ever and forced him to spill the details. 

In the spirit of confidentiality, Kent decides to head this conversation off before it starts.

“It’s not really my story to tell,” he says. “I mean, specifically about — you know, what happened between me and Jack.”

“I’m not asking about Jack,” says Connor, dismissively, not breaking his gaze. He smiles, petal-soft and honey-sweet. “I’m asking about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. I want to know what you like, what you’re into.”

Kent furrows his brow. And then, slowly, like he’s turning on some lazy axis, Kent wises up to the energy in the room. The hot tea brewing in Connor’s eyes, the unvoiced words in the slant of his mouth, the forward pull in the lines of his body — Kent can see it all now, see it for what it is. Perhaps he recognizes it only because it is a reflection of his younger self, his eager curiosity and pliant heart. Connor smiles, just a little.

“I like you,” Connor says, smooth and sure. His confidence is somewhat baffling to Kent; the last time he had been sitting across from a beautiful boy, Kent had known that he had loved him, but he hadn’t dared voice it. When Connor speaks, though, the words flow out of him effortlessly, like the steady current of an unhurried stream. 

The weightedness of this new dialogue pins Kent in place. He doesn’t know what to think, or what to say, or what to do. He’s not exactly  _ confused, _ because he knows that he finds Connor attractive; he knows that he likes attractive men, and he knows that he likes it when attractive men like  _ him. _ But Connor is his only friend, his housemate, his teammate, and while he has never fully believed that augmenting already-extant relationships with some sort of romantic side-plot is truly the complicating factor that others purport it to be, Connor is at the center of everything in his life right now. He doesn’t know if he could handle another full-scale lifestyle severance like the one he had experienced after Jack’s overdose. Kent also knows that, despite the fact that five years have passed since that time, Kent still holds Jack too tenderly in his heart to fall so easily into the arms of someone else.

When Kent doesn’t respond right away, Connor smiles, easy and comfortable, and his lax manner begins to seep into Kent’s own soul. Connor runs his fingers slowly through his own chestnut-brown hair, and Kent’s gaze flick up to follow their movement for a moment before settling back on Connor’s deep, warm eyes. “You look scared,” Connor says, looking mildly amused. “Are you scared?”

“No,” Kent says, but he’s not sure if he’s telling the truth.

Connor’s hand leaves his own hair and falls against Kent’s own messy waves. He threads his fingers through Kent’s hair, now, and it feels so tenderly sweet that Kent’s breath catches in his chest.

“I want to kiss you,” Connor says, like it’s simple. It’s a strange thought that, perhaps, for him, it is. “Can I kiss you, Kent?”

Kent doesn’t have the presence of mind that Connor has in this moment. But, then again, he has never been an excellent interpersonal communicator. He knows what he wants, but he can’t ask for it; he can’t risk the rejection that might come, even though Connor himself posed the question. 

He can’t make the words leave his throat, but he leans into the hand in his hair, and he gazes into his eyes, and he parts his lips, and he hopes that Connor knows what he means.

Then, Connor’s mouth is on his, warm and wet, and his tongue slips against Kent’s, and Kent relaxes, soothed by the familiar heat spreading through his body. He hasn’t done this in  _ so long. _

Connor has his fingers curled at the nape of Kent’s neck, and he’s squeezing Kent’s shoulder just a little. When Kent finally pulls back, Connor’s touch lingers.

\--

They don’t stop at just one.

Connor guides him into a prolonged kiss before the food comes, and another while the title sequence for  _ Love & Hip Hop _ is playing above them on the television. After Connor has done the dishes and Kent has mixed the drinks, they find themselves all too excited to taste the liquor on each other’s tongues, to tease a laugh out of the other one with the graze of teeth against skin, to feel each other’s hair and wrestle for control.

When Connor works his way into Kent’s lap, though, Kent squeezes his hip in warning.

Connor pulls back from the kiss, just barely. His hot-tea eyes are still burning up for Kent, and it makes Kent shiver, just a little. “Don’t tell me that we can’t do this,” Connor says, soft, his lips berry-red.

Kent’s eyes flick over his face, as close and out-of-focus as it is, as much as he can barely think about anything but that  _ mouth. _ He really is, honestly, very nice to look at. “I mean,” Kent manages, finally. “I mean, it’s — not — we probably — we  _ really _ shouldn’t go down this road any farther than we already are, man.”

Connor frowns. “Why not?” he asks, and Kent sees the temptation that has been brewing in his eyes all evening start to cool off.

“I’m six years older than you,” Kent says, because it’s an easier excuse than  _ I’m still in love with my ex.  _ “I was already playing hockey by the time you were born.”

“That’s hot,” Connor says, apparently undeterred.

“You’re not even old enough to remember when Paris Hilton said ‘that’s hot’,” says Kent, plaintively.

“You think I haven’t watched  _ The Simple Life?” _

“I don’t know what I think, man.”

Connor reaches to trace the veins on the back of Kent’s left hand. He watches his own progress, staying solemn and silent until he reaches the tips of Kent’s fingers. “I’m not asking to be your boyfriend or anything,” he says. “I’m not ready for anything like that. I just think we could have fun together.”

Kent thinks about that; he has no doubt that, factually, Connor’s right. And it’s tempting, the idea of falling into bed with someone after a long day, having someone who could work the knots and strains out of his muscles, giving in to someone like that. It  _ has _ been a long time, and Kent has never done it with someone with any real experience. He knows that, ironically, Connor at eighteen has a much longer romantic resume than Kent does at twenty-four. He wonders, for a moment, what it would feel like to release himself to the work of a practiced hand.

But something catches painfully in his heart when he thinks about sharing things with Connor that he had once shared with Jack, things that he still dreams of sharing with Jack again, things that he’s not quite ready to share with anyone else. As pathetic as Kent fears that it may be, he can’t bring himself to give up on a future with Jack, and if he believes in that possibility, then he can’t justify filling the liminal space with auxiliary pursuits or meaningless flings. He has always had a one-track mind; he has always been gunning towards a goal. This is most clearly true for hockey, but it is also true, Kent thinks, for love.

But there is, truly, still some part of Kent that is not a hyper-focused ladder-climber, and is, instead, a human being, one with a warm, romantic heart and a desire to connect with other people. When he looks at Connor, he sees something familiar, something that, when he lost it years ago, hollowed him out and left him wandering the world empty and alone. Kent thinks that it’s selfish, a disservice to what he still feels for Jack; he can’t stop himself from calling it infidelity, the way he feels when Connor presses against him, mouth and chest and hips, foreheads and hands and thighs. 

He wonders if it’s really so different from how Connor has strayed from Hannah — miles apart from someone and so, so close to another. Does the other person’s investment, present or not, truly matter if the actor themselves cannot tell the difference? How can one pass judgement on another if the action is the same?

But, again, Kent is lonely. He wants what he used to have with Jack; he wants what Connor can give him now. They are so incredibly different; they are close enough to the same thing.

“Maybe,” says Kent, thumbing Connor’s hip, “maybe we could just do this, you know.”

“Making out?”

“Being close.”

Connor smiles. “You’ll let me kiss you, though?”

Kent meets his eyes. “I’ll even kiss you back,” he says, with a grin.

“Dare you,” says Connor. “Do it right now.”

In all his years, Kent has never once backed down from a dare.

\--

In the weeks that follow, Kent and Connor find a routine of their own. It’s a casual one, without too much conversation or contextualization. What matters is that they are working to establish a kind of grammar, one that is borne out in predictable patterning, a wordless expectation and delivery. It means shared coffee cups at breakfast, lips pressed to the ceramic in a way that feels like a kiss, and it also means real kisses in the evenings, after practice, after dinner, when Connor can fit his mouth against Kent’s and make him feel like the world is small enough to fit in the palm of his calloused hand.

They share a bed, some nights, when Kent wants company and Connor doesn’t have someone else over. They share a pillow, too, and a series of lingering kisses that draw the day’s worries directly out of Kent’s mind. They never do anything more; Kent isn’t ready, and Connor gets it elsewhere. There is no need to. What their practice lacks in love and lust, it makes up for in comfort and constancy.

Sometimes, all anyone really needs is the grounding pull of another figure in the dark, the press of a shoulder, the sound of a breath.

When Kent lets Connor kiss him to sleep, he feels the vibrancy of attachment, of  _ connection, _ that he has missed for five long years. It’s not the same as what he has been missing, and, really, they are doing no more than adding the heady charm of kisses to a budding friendship, but it’s  _ something _ — and it’s nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the opening lines of this may sound familiar to you if you've read the whole fic pretty recently - i pulled them from ch16 because i realized that i had them do a full team practice in the middle of offseason like an idiot, so i switched out the references to that and put it here instead
> 
> also i was so nervous about posting this (mildly) spicy chapter lmao it's been so romantically bland so far! 
> 
> me, a 26 year old person: it's embarrassing to write about kissing
> 
> i'll unpack the context of this chapter more as we go on (like, how kent and whiskey are manifesting this kissing thing that they have going), but for now, just know that it's extremely casual lmao
> 
> ALSO, if people still use tumblr, follow me @ parsonne !


	23. D5: decisions

Kent finally finds his place in the Red Wings lineup as a center, flanked by wingers Liam Belanger and Connor Whisk. The defenseman pair that usually skates out with them is a couple of Canadians, Davis Greenwell and Nicolas Dagenais, who the boys call “Davey” and “Dash”, named for their hometown-boy charm and on-ice speed, respectively.

Kent also finds out that they call Connor “Whiskey”, which he likes. It represents a kind of familiarity, a locker-room closeness, that is entirely separate from the kind that Kent has developed with Connor over the past few months. The interplay between hockey and his personal life has always been forced into relief for Kent; these spheres orbit and define each other simultaneously, from _childhood_ to _Jack_ to _Vegas_ to _Connor_ to _now,_ and it just feels right, in a way that Kent cannot imagine ever deviating from.

Nearly every day, they eat, dress, warm up, skate at varying levels of intensity, cool down, eat, drive home, eat, and sleep. In between, Kent and Connor find time for trash television, for final touches on the house, for drinks and laughs and stories.

Connor goes out some nights; he comes back most nights. When he does, Kent feels him slide into bed beside him, and he gets a thrill from the feel of another person near him again, a juxtaposition of comfort and newness that has been foreign to him for so long.

It helps him sleep in the way that the beer once had.

\--

_The night air is cool, coming in from the open window, fluttering the curtains. It’s a pleasant night, a calm night, a night that Kent has relived over and over for years._

_Jack carefully slides out of bed, and Kent stirs. Once Jack has made it to the hall, or maybe already to the bathroom, Kent buries his head against Jack’s pillow. He breathes. He loves how Jack smells, and it overwhelms him, now. He listens for Jack because, at two o’clock in the morning in a silent house, there is nothing else to catch his drifting attention apart from the creak of the medicine cabinet door._

_Kent drifts a little before resolving to fight sleep for just a minute longer; Jack, always predictable and always touch-starved, would want some kind of attention upon his return to the bedroom. But Jack stays in the bathroom forever, much longer than normal, and—_

_The soft thud of Jack’s shoulder falling against the tile echoes through the house like a gunshot, louder than it could have possibly been, and still not as loud as it should have been. Kent is already alert, terrified, desperate, when he hears Jack’s head make its own cushioned impact directly afterward._

_He’s out of bed and in the bathroom doorway before he knows it, gliding ghost-like down the hall, his pulse pounding in his ears. He sees Jack’s ice blue eyes staring straight up, unseeing, into the blinding fluorescence._

_Jack’s face is pale as the moon, cold as porcelain. Kent takes in the contrast of Jack’s dark hair against the pale tile, the white pills scattered across the black countertop, the plastic lid on the floor. Black, white. White, black, white._

_Black._

\--

Kent wakes up screaming.

Connor, propped up on an elbow in the dark beside him, reaches to feel Kent’s sweaty hair, his clammy cheek, his hammering heart.

“Bad dream?” he says, but Kent can barely hear him. 

He shoves the covers away from his legs and barely makes it to the bathroom sink before he retches. He grips the edge of the sink, trying to grit his teeth through the nausea-induced dizziness. It hasn’t been this bad in months, not since Vegas, not since Christmas.

Nearly a year ago, now.

“Kent,” Connor calls from the bedroom, his voice pitched high with worry.

Kent slams the handle of the tap upwards and ducks his face under the cold spray for a moment. He splashes more water on his face, rubbing his eyes, and blots his forehead with a hand towel when he comes up for air. 

“Kent,” Connor says again, but this time, he’s in the doorway. He’s close enough that Kent can hear him now, but he still sounds yards away.

“Nightmare,” Kent whispers, but amidst the thrum in his ears, his own voice sounds like a roar. He knows he must look grim. In this moment, he can’t bring himself to care.

“Are you—”

“Go,” Kent says, gritting his teeth. He doesn’t want Connor to see him throw up.

Mercifully, Connor retreats, out of sight and out of mind. Kent grips his hair, bent over the sink, the tap still running loud. It gives Kent something to focus on besides the overwhelming need to heave, but then, of course, it overtakes him.

When he makes it back to his bedroom, mouth minty once more, Connor is sitting on the bed with the bedside table lamp casting a dim light from an angle that sets him aglow around the edges. He has a sleeve of Saltine crackers in his hands and a cup of water nestled between his knees.

“Hey,” he says.

Kent, embarrassed, doesn’t say anything as he gets in bed beside him.

Connor offers the crackers, and Kent shakes his head. “Water?” says Connor, tapping the glass.

Kent almost declines that, too, but decides that it might be good for him, so he takes it and drains it in one go.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Sure,” says Connor, and touches Kent’s arm. When Kent doesn’t shy away from his touch, he snakes an arm around him, reaching up under his shirt to rub between his shoulder blades. He rests his head against Kent’s shoulder, easy and light.

“Sorry,” says Kent, but he can’t exactly pinpoint what he’s apologizing for.

“It’s okay,” says Connor. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Kent bites his lip. “Sometimes I get nightmares,” he says. “About — finding — you know. Finding Jack. And — it’s just — all those memories and I — I haven’t had one that vivid in a long time. I don’t know — why—”

Connor nods, drawing his thumb down Kent’s spine and then back up again, soothing and soft. “It was really sudden,” he says. “I woke up to go to the bathroom and you were fine. When I got back you were _screaming,_ man.”

_Leaving._

That makes sense.

Kent bites his lip. He thinks about Jack sliding out of bed, charting a path to his pills. “Listen, can I ask something of you that’s — not fair?”

“Yeah,” says Connor, without pause.

Kent focuses on the grounding feeling of Connor thumbing his ribs for a moment before he speaks. “When I have that nightmare, like — the first thing is — I feel Jack getting out of bed, you know, to go — take his pills, because — that’s — and I just — I’ve never slept in bed with anybody since then.”

Connor nods. “Right,” he says, catching on.

“And I just — I don’t — if you sleep in here — you’re welcome to, I don’t mind, I just — look, I know I can’t stop you from needing to take a piss, but — if you stay in here—”

“Don’t leave?”

That hits Kent hard, somewhere around his diaphragm, and it buries itself there. Kent feels himself curling around it, unable to speak, struggling to breathe.

Connor leans to switch the light off, keeping his hand against Kent’s back, warm and comforting and _there._

“I won’t leave,” he says.

Kent nods, thankful, grateful, and overwhelmed. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he rubs the back of his neck. His shoulders are tense, his brow is furrowed, and his mouth is set in a flat line. “I want to go to sleep,” he says. “But—”

“Lie down,” Connor tells him, not as an order, but as a direction, because Kent cannot force himself to move without it. 

Kent complies, settling against his pillow in the dark. He breathes out, slow and shaky, but much calmer than before. Connor finds him, rests his head on the same pillow, tucks an arm over Kent’s waist, and thumbs his lower back again. Their noses brush, and their mouths find each other without hesitation. Kent lets Connor feel his hair, and nudge his tongue against Kent’s, and sigh against his lips. Kent lets himself run his knuckles over Connor’s side, his belly, his hip. He rests his hand there, just under the soft flannel of Connor’s pajama bottoms, and kisses Connor until he fades into a more restful sleep.

When Kent wakes up, Connor is still there, pressed against his side.

\--

The next night, Connor doesn’t come home from the bar, or dinner, or wherever it is that he goes with the men he likes. That’s fine; Kent can keep up with the Kardashians on his own, with a bottle of red wine and an order of pad thai.

He overdoes it, but that’s normal.

He falls into his bed after too much wine, bleary and over-warm, and struggles to haul his crewneck over his head. He falls asleep on top of the covers, and, again, he dreams of Jack.

\--

_The air, the window, the curtains. The memory._

_Jack, standing; Kent, stirring. Soft steps down the hall._

_The creak of the medicine cabinet door._

_The tick of the clock._

_Thud._

_Kent leaps to his feet, floating, staring. Jack lies flat, staring, unseeing._

_Black, white. White, black, white._

_Black._

\--

Kent wakes up screaming, again. He fights the nausea and loses, again. He makes it back to bed, shaking and pale, and finds his phone in the dark.

[3:08 am] are you okay

[3:08 am] dont have to tlk to me just tell me your okay

[3:22 am] i know its early but when you ge t up please tell me your okay.

[3:23 am] i dream about you all the time

[3:34 am] just had one and makes me feel like it s all happening again im not trying to be crazy its just always there

[3:42 am] i kno its probably always there for you too im sorry. its worse for you i know that

[3:43 am] im not triyng to make this about me

[3:45 am] zimms i hope you know that i want you to be okay

[3:46 am] thats literally all i want

[3:46 am] all i ever wanted

[3:46 am] abck then too

[3:50 am] sorry

\--

The guilt washes over him so severely in the clarity of the morning that Kent almost can’t bear it. Of _course_ Jack never texts him back; all Kent ever does is blow his phone up with memories from _before,_ before Jack was who he is now, before he forced Kent out of his life, before he had a supportive team and an NCAA captaincy and the human capacity for joy.

 _Maybe that’s extra,_ Kent thinks as he pours himself a mimosa, _but it’s true. Probably._

Probably, because Kent doesn’t really know who Jack is anymore. He can only see him through a television screen, geared up for a game, deadpanning through an interview, smiling awkwardly for a photo op. But Kent remembers the look behind Jack’s eyes back then, before he got sober; he would recognize it a mile off, if it were there, but it’s not. Jack seems _okay,_ if not _good;_ honestly, though, Kent’s not even sure what _good_ looks like on Jack.

He thought he knew, once, but he was wrong.

It hurts to think about how wrong he was, how myopic he was, how stupid he was to think that he could make Jack happy all on his own. 

Jack is a rare breed; he is only human, of course, but the things that would have derailed a normal person would never derail Jack, not back then. They could be focusing on homework for Jack’s favorite class (history), or watching some action movie, or getting high as kites at some teammate’s billet house, or literally tearing each other’s clothes off in bed, and Jack would still sometimes say, “Only six more months,” or “only a hundred more days,” or “only five more weeks,” or “only—” and then nothing more because Kent would kiss him before he could ruin the moment. 

Of _course_ Jack wouldn’t want to relive that. Of _course_ he wouldn’t want to wake up to texts reminding him of how much Kent remembered from those years, or the fact that Kent existed at all.

Kent’s mouth twitches. He frowns into his mimosa. He feels, once again, displaced from his own life, from his own memories. Kent thinks that, in some strange way, it’s disrespectful of him to linger on those years, those events, because they’re surely painful for Jack himself to revisit. But, at the same time, he can’t banish the thoughts from his head the way that Jack could banish _him._

He wonders if Jack resents the fact that Kent was ever there, ever in his life, as someone to bear witness to Jack’s mistakes. He wonders if Jack resents the fact that someone saw him like that, that someone remembers him before he was _better._ He wonders if Jack resents that his actions were part of Kent’s life, too.

Sometimes, Kent feels forcibly stunted. He knows, in his best moments, that he ought to let it all go, somehow. He thinks that, if he knew how, he might. 

But, in his worst moments, he wants to yell at Jack, to take him to task for traumatizing Kent like that, for forcing a seventeen-year-old kid, a boy hopelessly in love for the first time, to bear the brunt of decisions that Jack doesn’t even remember making, for leaving Kent to pick up the pieces while Jack laid listlessly on the bed, barely able to form the sound of Kent’s name. He almost can’t believe that Jack did all that to someone he claimed to love, even just as a friend, much less as _whatever-they-were._ He knows, of course, that Jack wasn’t thinking straight, that he couldn’t be accountable for his actions, but that almost makes it worse; Kent hates that Jack had an excuse, that he was able to forgo accountability, while Kent had to find him lying on the tile floor, cold like death, and then find _himself_ shoved out of the Zimmermanns’ lives for the privilege of it all. 

Most of all, he can’t believe that he had let Jack make him think that taking care of his drug-addict best friend, his on-again-off-again hookup (or boyfriend, or lover, or whatever Jack would have called it — Kent had never asked) were the best years of his life.

Truly, though, Kent is afraid that they might have been.

He checks his texts.

Nothing.

\--

“Is it wrong,” Kent asks Connor, later that night, drunk on wine and deep in his own mind, “to feel like this?”

“Feel like what?” Connor asks, his mouth full of olives from the amateur-level charcuterie board that he had put together for their dinner.

Kent drinks deeply from his glass. “Like that I’m mad at him for how I feel. It shouldn’t be his fault how _I_ feel.”

Connor blinks, realizing that Kent is talking about Jack. “I don’t know,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Like I can’t believe that he gets to be better and I don’t,” says Kent, bluntly. “I’ve done all the same shit. I’ve gone to rehab. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve uprooted my life and tried to start over. I’ve tried to let it all go and forgive him and — I still wake up like I did the other night, and last night—”

“Last night?” Connor says, furrowing his brow.

Kent steamrolls over it. “How come it worked for him and it didn’t work for me? How is that fair? How come he gets to sleep at night, you know? He had all that shit happen, and, like, trust me, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, it fucking haunts me that it happened to him, it was the worst thing — I’m not taking it lightly. But he got released and, like, I guess he went home to his parents’ fucking mansion, he got to go to his mom’s school on his dad’s money and play the cushiest hockey ever, like, let’s not pretend NCAA is hard, and — look, when I got out of rehab, I had to drive myself back to my empty-ass house and sign myself up for therapy, I had to — right after it all happened, I got to get on a plane, move across the country, away from the family I never even really had _and_ the one I thought I would get to borrow for the rest of my life, and — struggle it out, you know, wishing I had been the one who — so that he could be okay and I could be fucking dead, you know, because let’s be real, he would have been too fucked up to save me. And — I always loved him more than I loved myself, in those days. And I had to feel like that, for years, and I’d be lying if I said that I still didn’t feel like that, and — look, I’m happy for him. At the end of the day, like, on top of everything, I’m happy for him. That’s how I feel. I just — I’m just saying, like—”

Connor watches him, too drunk himself to know exactly the right thing to say, but Kent appreciates, numbly, that he tries anyway. “That makes sense,” he says. “I’ve never dealt with — like, anything like that, but — I mean, it’s not crazy that you’re mad.”

“I’m not,” Kent insists, but he’s not sure that it’s true. He oscillates between extremes on a regular basis; he’s not sure what’s authentic and what’s performative, what’s childish and what’s mature. He doesn’t know what’s rational, even, so he tries not to care, but he does, because he wants to be right for Jack. “I don’t want him to think that I’m mad.”

“But what if you are?”

“Then I want to deal with it before he decides to talk to me again,” says Kent, resolutely. “I don’t want him to see that shit. He doesn’t need that.”

Connor furrows his brow. “You think he’ll talk to you again?”

That was, decidedly, the _wrong_ thing to say.

Kent stares at him, wounded, murderous.

Connor softens. “Kent, that’s not what I—”

_“Fuck you—”_

“I just meant, like, do you think you’ll get back to—”

“I _know_ what the fuck you meant, you don’t get it, you don’t get—”

“Okay, okay,” says Connor, trying to back off. “You don’t have to yell at me, man.”

Kent glares at him, but just crosses his arms, pouting. He wipes at his eyes.

“Don’t cry,” says Connor, softly.

Kent shakes his head.

“Kent,” says Connor.

Kent looks away, unable to quell the rush of hurt radiating up from the pit of his stomach.

“Kenny,” says Connor, and Kent _snaps._

“Don’t ever call me that,” he says, harshly, and Connor’s eyebrows go up in shock. “Don't you _ever_ — don’t you _dare—”_

“Okay,” Connor says, again, clearly backpedaling as fast as possible.

“That’s his,” Kent says, and dissolves behind his hands. “That’s _his,_ I’m — I’m his.”

Connor watches him with such a pitying expression on his face that Kent has to leave the room. He goes out onto the back deck, downs his drink, wishes for the cigarettes that he used to carry, years ago, that he hasn’t had on him since juniors. He sways in the cold, tears freezing against his cheeks, the sharp inhales of his sobs stinging his lungs.

Just to see what happens, he throws his wine glass off the balcony.

It hits the trunk of a tree and _shatters._

Immediately, Kent feels like he has killed it, and some ridiculous, melodramatic guilt sweeps through him like the now-familiar nausea that has plagued him for years. He drops to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then, for good measure, he yells it.

It echoes off the trees, the snow, the walls of the house. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

He wonders, even if it echoed to the ends of the earth, whether or not Jack would even want to hear it.

\--

His nightmare comes back that night, and the next night, and over and over until Kent is forced to camp out on the couch again. Connor worries about him, but doesn’t say anything. For that, Kent is thankful. He has never had anyone worry over him before; he doesn’t know how he should respond.

After a week of this, Connor sits across from him and fixes him with a serious look. “We’re playing Boston next week,” he says. “The thirteenth of December. It’s a Saturday.”

“I know,” Kent says.

“So?”

“So what?”

Connor leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, and shakes his fringe out of his eyes. “I think you should talk to him,” he says. “He lives near Boston, right?”

Kent catches up. _“Jack?”_

“Who else, dude?”

“I can’t talk to him, dude, he’d lose his shit if I—”

“So what, you’re gonna wait your whole life to see if he makes the first move?” Connor laughs a little; Kent suspects that Connor has never, in his entire life, waited for anyone to make the first move. “You can’t do this forever, man. You haven’t slept good in weeks.”

Kent furrows his brow. He had never truly considered the fact that his only options might be _break the ice_ or _do this forever._

Kent knows, without a doubt, that the latter is entirely unsustainable. He had never really believed that Jack would keep him away any longer than necessary; he had always figured that Jack just _wasn’t ready._ But, as the years have dragged on, it has begun to feel as though Jack has leaned into the rift that he created; that he has decided that, because it’s convenient for him, it will persist, regardless of what might be necessary for Kent’s own peace of mind. Kent knows that Jack doesn’t _have_ to consider Kent’s peace of mind in pursuit of his own, but he resents that Jack’s still the one who gets to make all the choices here.

Knowing Jack, Kent figures that he hasn’t thought at all about what this whole thing has done to Kent, how worthless it has made him feel, how boxed-in and rejected and shunned and isolated and friendless and unlovable and—

“You need to talk to him,” says Connor, interrupting Kent’s spiraling thoughts. “Who gives a fuck about whether he wants to talk to you or not? You’ve spent years of your life thinking about him. He can handle thinking about you for, like, a night.”

Kent meets his eyes.

Connor’s right.

“Okay,” he says. “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i took a break for thanksgiving but i'm back now! we're quickly approaching epikegster and the REUNION part of this fic
> 
> again, i meant it when i said slow burn!!
> 
> also, the dream stuff is pulled from earlier parts to allow for ~continuity~ of the recurring dream narrative, so if it sounds familiar, that's why
> 
> love y'all


	24. D6: boston bound

Before Kent flies to Boston, he flies to New York City.

Being _anywhere_ in New York always makes him uneasy, but today he’s not trying to think about anything but work.

He checks out of his Manhattan hotel, picks up a cup of coffee, and makes his way to 30 Rockefeller Plaza for his NBC Sports interview.

When the camera’s recording light clicks on, Kent is ready.

“Welcome to the show,” says Bob Zimmermann, sporting a navy suit and a striped bleu-blanc-rouge tie.

“Thanks for having me,” says Kent, unbuttoning the jacket of his own grey suit. “It’s been a while, Bob, how are you?”

“I’m doing very well, always so glad to have hockey back on television after a long offseason,” says Bob. “I’m sure you’re glad to be back out there on the ice, too.”

“Of course,” says Kent. “It’s such a rush every year, you know?”

“And in a new jersey, nonetheless.”

Kent laughs. “Yeah, that’s the biggest change, for sure. It’s been good, though, you know, getting to know the guys, getting settled in—”

Bob nods, glancing at his notes. “The Detroit Red Wings,” he says, the name of the team sounding odd in his accent, “are on a fantastic rebuild, you know, good draft picks this year.”

“Right,” says Kent. “I’ve been working a lot on the ice with Connor Whisk, who went first overall, and he’s such a hardworking guy. It’s great to get a crew of younger players in the mix to offset those of us who have been in the league for a few years now.”

Bob nods. “You know, it’s not every day that a team holds two recent first-overall picks, with Whisk being one and you being the other, of course.”

“Yeah, well.” He laughs. “I honestly didn’t think about that when I signed. I just wanted to play hockey on a promising team. I thought I could contribute something to the rebuild.”

“Well, we wanted to get you on the show today just to ask a few questions about this new arrangement — first, what can longtime fans of the Red Wings expect from your style of play, what are you bringing with you that’s uniquely ‘Kent Parson’ material?”

Kent nods, thankful for the softball question. “I’m a fast skater,” he says. “Anyone who watches the games will know by now that I’m not a really physical guy, I’m more of a details person. I get all my game momentum from speed and, you know, soft hands.” He grins. “I’ve worked really hard over the summer and I think it’s showing in my game so far this season. As we go into the New Year, you know, we’re obviously trying to do all that we can to put points on the board, and I want to do as much as I can for this team in that regard.”

“Mm, of course,” says Bob. “You know, we’re also curious about what you saw in the Red Wings when you decided to sign. It’s not entirely obvious why a player like you would choose the team at the bottom of the Eastern Conference rankings, so—”

“It just felt right,” says Kent, truthfully, although it was, of course, a much more complicated decision than that. “I really wanted a team with history, you know, and the Wings being an Original Six, and having the whole Gordie legacy and — Fedorov and that whole era, it was perfect. And, you know, like I said, I really think this team is one that I can contribute to. Ice time was really important to me in the decision-making process. I wanted a team that could use a guy like me.”

“You’re already rising to the top in terms of points,” says Bob, tapping his statistics reference sheet. “Your stats are very impressive, as always.”

“Yeah, well, I was always good at math,” says Kent, and Bob laughs.

“You’re a numbers guy, eh, Parse?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Bob shakes his head fondly, chuckling, and he turns to face Camera Four. “We’ll take a commercial break, but join us for coverage of the Red Wings at TD Garden tomorrow night, Sunday, December 14, at noon Eastern.”

When the cameramen signal that they are no longer on air, Bob swivels back around and stands to shake Kent’s hand. Kent stands, too, buttoning his jacket back up with his free hand, mirroring Bob’s identical motion. “Kent, it’s always a joy,” Bob says, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. Kent warms, and smiles, and lets go of his hand.

“You announcing the game tomorrow?”

“No, no, I’m flying home this afternoon,” Bob says, regretfully. “Alicia has a charity dinner tonight, and I’d hate to miss an opportunity to have such a beautiful woman on my arm.”

Kent smiles a little. He has always envied the ability to be so plainly smitten with someone else, the way that Bob and Alicia have always been with each other. Kent has always found it charming, as much as it embarrassed Jack whenever he and Kent hung out at the Zimmermanns’ house over Christmas, or Easter, or offseason, or any long weekends that they could stand to make the six-hour drive down from Rimouski.

“Sounds good,” Kent says. “I’ll give the Bruins hell for you, then.”

Bob laughs, loud and resonant, and grips Kent’s shoulder. “I know you will, my boy,” he says, and Kent beams. “You know, I’ve heard that Rask has a real blind spot, why don’t I buy you lunch and let you in on what I know, eh?”

Kent laughs, his heart soaring with reckless joy. “I have a flight down to Boston at two since we’re practicing tonight, but if we can get to LaGuardia by then—I have PreCheck, so I can get to the gate pretty fast.”

“My flight is at two-twenty,” says Bob, looking pleased at the convenient timing. “I’ll drive us both.”

\--

They find a table at some upscale gastropub. Bob insists on ordering a beer flight for each of them; Kent, for his part, is more than happy to drink four beers at once, regardless of the volume of the glasses. Bob tells him all about Tuukka Rask and his apparent blind spot; Kent tells him all about Connor and how well they’re working on the ice together.

“You’d skate well with just about anyone, I suspect,” says Bob, smiling at Kent from across the round patio table.

“I don’t know,” Kent says, humbly, because Bob _always_ flatters him into self-awareness in a way that no one else can. It feels, in some strange way, like a trick that Bob uses to teach him good manners. “I’ve found it so hard to, like, click with people, ever since I left Rimouski.”

It’s a risky statement, but it’s what comes out of his mouth, and Kent is too slow on the draw to stop it.

Thankfully, Bob doesn’t bristle. Instead, he just salts his soup, stirs it up, nods a little. “I’ve been an analyst for as long as I was a player, now,” he says, and laughs a little self-consciously at how much that statement ages him. “I’ve seen you play a lot of hockey, Kent. I think I’d agree, you know, that — as well as you play now, it’s been a struggle for you to get back to those early years.”

Kent nods, feeling vaguely chastised, though he knows Bob isn’t leveling any kind of criticism. “It was different then,” he says. “I just — I don’t think — I could have that with anybody else.”

Bob sips the final beer on his board, the darkest, and sets it carefully back into its slot before he speaks. “It was really something,” he says.

Kent nods. He says, “I know,” and drops his gaze. He overloads his fork with salad and shoves it into his mouth. He chews so that he doesn’t have to speak.

“You miss it, hm?”

Kent sighs. “Yeah, I miss it. How could I not? I don’t think Jack feels the same, but _—_ fuck, I can’t blame him.”

Bob sips his beer again, the glass catching the high-noon sunlight. “Jack is a tough nut,” he says, splicing the idiom too early. Kent smiles, weakly, because it’s true either way.

“He is kind of a nut,” says Kent, because he can’t help himself.

“Ouais, he’s — better now. Better, but still a nut,” says Bob, and laughs. “Crazy.”

“The craziest thing he ever did was go to _college—”_

Bob laughs, hearty and full. “Right, right, of course _you_ understand this. I never knew anything about all of this college stuff, you know, that was always Alicia’s business. She is so smart, God, so much smarter than me.”

“It’s all the head injuries,” Kent says, and grins.

“No,” Bob says, laughing. “No, I wish I could say that it was, but it’s not.”

Kent smiles and loads his fork up with more greens. “Jack must have gotten it from Alicia, then.”

“Oh, yes,” Bob says, smiling warmly at Kent. “He was always so — _in his mind,_ you know? I don’t know how to explain—”

“No, no, I know what you mean,” says Kent, and laughs. “Fuck. I know what you mean.”

“I think you probably knew about that more than anyone,” Bob says, truthfully. “More than Alicia and I ever did.” 

Kent wonders if he’s imagining the tinge of regret that he hears.

“Maybe,” he admits, but shrugs. “Not anymore, though. I haven’t talked to him for — not since — it’s been five years now.”

Bob breathes in. “Yes, well,” he says, on the exhale. “That is his own doing, I think.”

Kent furrows his brow. He wants to know what Bob knows, whether this silence from Jack was a spoken mandate or if it was just an awkward, accidental precedent that was too much of a _rule_ to break at this point. “I guess,” he says. “I just — hope he’s happy now. Whatever that looks like.”

Bob nods, slow and evaluative. “He is happier,” he says, but he doesn’t say _he is happy._ He had said something like this before, in the Italian restaurant parking lot. Kent knows what this sentiment means: Jack will never be satisfied. 

He takes another bite of salad, this time garnishing it with a slice of tomato.

“That’s good,” he says, when he swallows, because it’s all he can say.

Bob drains his glass and tosses the cloth napkin onto his empty plate. “Have you ever thought about, you know, saying hello to him? Perhaps he’s waiting for you to—” he gestures, trying to find the right words. “Open the floor, right?”

Kent shrugs. “When I text, he doesn’t respond,” he says. “I know he’s busy and stuff, I don’t hold it against him.”

Bob sits back in his chair, looking more surprised than Kent had expected him to. Still, he doesn’t take up for either side as much as others might. “Well, we all know that Jack does not answer his phone,” he mutters.

“Right,” says Kent, thinking of all the times that he was tucked up in bed at his billet house, calling Jack in the middle of the night on his prepaid grocery-store phone. Every time, every single time, Jack’s hushed voice would come crackling down the line before the phone had finished its first ring.

\--

Jack’s phone lights up. 

He picks it up immediately, as usual.

“Papa,” he says, standing up from his desk to shut the door to his bedroom, stifling the perpetual noise from downstairs.

“Jacques,” says Bob. “Je dérange-tu?” _Are you busy?_

“Non,” Jack says, on instinct, but immediately regrets it. Phone calls with his dad always send his blood pressure through the roof. “Euh—”

“Ça va, hm?” _How are you?_

“Chu pas mal fatigué, moé,” says Jack. _I’m pretty tired._ He’s really hoping that he can get out of this conversation entirely. He glances at the paused video lecture on his laptop; it looks pretty inviting, now, in a way that it hadn’t thirty seconds ago. 

His hopefulness evaporates when Bob steamrolls him, like he always does.

“Et vos études—?” _And your studies—?_

“C’est bon, c’est le fun,” says Jack, clipped. _It’s good, it’s fun._ What he means, though, is: _what do you want?_

“Franchement?” Bob says, a little disbelieving. _Really?_

“Ouais,” Jack says, trying to stay neutral in the face of casual judgement. He knows that his father vaguely approves of his decision to go to school, insofar as it was a decision to play NCAA hockey, _some_ kind of hockey, anything but coaching kids. But he knows, of course, that Bob would rather be watching him on his NHL TV subscription. It doesn’t matter that Jack _likes_ school.

“C’est de valeur d’avoir perdu la game d’hier,” Bob says, mildly, after Jack offers him no further conversational threads. _It’s a shame to have lost the game yesterday._

“Mm,” says Jack, running his index finger over the weather-worn windowsill. He wants, desperately, to avoid talking to his father about hockey. He’s in a mood this week that means that he would talk to Bob about _anything_ as long as it wasn’t hockey, even though he’s already finding this phone call incredibly tedious. Jack finds small talk tedious anyway, but whenever Bob takes too long to get to the point, Jack starts getting anxious. It seems as though, the longer that Bob puts off the actual substance of the conversation, the worse the news inevitably is. He wonders, as his father tells him about his flight to New York last night (and his charity dinner plans for this evening, and the poor quality of the hotel towels), whether or not someone in the family has died.

“Papa, chu dans le rush,” Jack says, eventually. _I’m kind of in a hurry._

“Euh, d’accord, d’accord, en tout cas — j’voulais seulement t’dire que ch’pogné le dîner avec Kent, t'sais, Kent Parson, eh?” _Oh, okay, well, anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I got lunch with Kent, you know, Kent Parson, eh?_

Jack blinks. He’s so taken aback that he can’t even formulate a response. He lets the line buzz between them for a moment, blankly staring across the room in disbelief.

“M’entends-tu, tu m’écoutes-tu?” Bob asks, after a long moment. _Can you hear me, are you listening?_

“Ouais,” says Jack, dully. He’s fighting a flare-up from his sparked-wire temper, but it’s not easy.

“Fait que—” _So—_

He can’t listen to this, whatever lecture Bob is launching into. “Pourquoi vous me dites ça?” Jack demands, interrupting him in irritation. “Il est pas parlable.” _Why are you telling me this? You’re not supposed to talk to him._

“Moi là, j’aime pas ça,” says Bob, airily, warningly. _Well, I don’t like that._

Jack grips the edge of the sill, thunking his head back against the chill of the windowpane. Of _course_ Bob doesn’t like the fact that Jack isn’t bringing Kent around anymore; he’s denying Bob the opportunity to celebrate his golden boy, his true apprentice, his favorite son. Jack knows, of course, that sometimes Bob _has_ to talk to Kent due to the nature of their professional circle, but chatting over lunch is an entirely different situation, one that is familiar and friendly in a way that Jack had not been prepared to accept.

“Je m’en sacre,” Jack says, a little harsher than he means to. _I don’t care._

His father _must_ know how painful it is for Jack to think about Bob and Kent interacting in the way that he wishes he could interact with both of them, even now. He’s working towards it, but he’s still so frustratingly behind. Jack has always wanted things to be easy like that, like they were between Bob and Kent when they all still lived in Quebec, when he hung around on the margins of their boisterous, cheerful dialogues, sullenly stoic, unable to shake the pressure.

Jack had thought that he would earn the right to his father’s uninhibited pride after the draft, that he and Kent would finally be on the same footing, more or less. But, of course, that hadn’t happened, because Jack had let things go sideways in the worst way possible. 

To this day, he’s still trying to sweat out the fever of guilt that overtakes him when he thinks about it. Therapy helps, and time helps, but neither can erase it. Not even close.

At the end of the day, Jack still wants the same things that he did back then, and he’s not sure whether that’s good or bad. He _wants_ to be able to grab lunch with his father, or his old teammates, or his new college friends, while he’s en route to an NHL game in some far-flung city. But, instead, he’s here, driving his NCAA team through losses and hearing about the joys of league networking, all over the phone. _Must be nice._

Somewhere in Bob’s general vicinity, a boarding call sounds over the loudspeaker. “Que c’est que t’as?” he hisses, as people shuffle around him with their bags in hand. _What’s the matter with you?_ “Jacques—”

“J’ai mon voyage,” Jack snaps, terse and boiling. _I’m done._

He hangs up.

When Bob calls him back, he doesn’t answer.

Later, when he’s feeling regretful, he texts him: _Désolé. (Sorry.)_

Bob must already be on the ground in Montréal, because he pings him back immediately. _S’tassé, jtm._ ( _Enough of that, I love you.)_

\--

After practice, Connor leads the team through cool-down drylands. It’s going well until Veck and Elks both stake a claim to the solo stationary bike in the corner of the locker room.

“This is a seniority issue,” says Veck.

“You’re only two years older than me, it’s not that deep,” Elks says. “Whiskey, you’re leading, use your power for good.”

“Huh?” Connor says, straightening up from a lunge. “Do whatever, Elks, you can have it.”

Kent, still feeling the burn of his own lunge, counts a total of four seconds before Veck tries to shove Connor’s head into the team laundry cart in retribution.

“You better back off, Whisk, that’s a fate worse than death,” Kent says, grinning, as Connor rushes to put a reasonable amount of distance between himself and the cart.

“No kidding, it’s bad enough when I do your laundry,” says Connor, shoving his shoulder when Kent walks past him to get to his locker.

“Oh, you’re doing his laundry, Whiskey?” Elks chirps from across the room, toweling his hair dry. “Pretty domestic, eh? You got something you wanna tell us?”

“Yeah, we’re married,” says Connor, without hesitation, even as Kent clams up a little while taking off his skates, a cold shock firing straight up his spine. “I’m pretty lucky, he’s got a better ass than your wife does.”

Elks’s reaction shifts the room’s attention away from Kent and Connor enough that Kent can let himself relax. He’s used to hearing comments like that, but it doesn’t exactly get easier. It just gets more _normal,_ which is somehow worse.

\--

When they get back to the hotel from the practice rink, Connor answers a FaceTime call from Hannah, his girlfriend studying at UC Berkeley, thousands of miles away from Connor’s own life (or mere hundreds, depending on the away games they had scheduled at any given time).

“Babe, perfect timing,” he says. “You wanna meet an NHL star?”

“Are you gonna say ‘you’re looking at him’?” says Hannah, her amused, chiding voice sounding tinny on speakerphone. “Because if you are—”

“Nah, it’s just Kent,” he says, and backs over to Kent’s bed so that he can appear in the frame. “He’s the one I live with. We’re at the hotel right now.”

“Hey, Kent,” says Hannah, grinning. “Connor always talks about you. He’s been obsessed since, like, before we met. He’s always telling me that you’re a really important hockey player and that I should know who you are, but I don’t, so—”

Kent laughs. “That’s okay,” he says. “I’m kind of washed up at this point anyway.”

Connor’s flushed cheeks imply that, more than likely, he had not expected Hannah to out him as a massive Kent Parson fan. “Here, let me take you out on the balcony and show you what Boston looks like,” Connor says quickly, crossing the room to slide the balcony door open. Kent gets a rush of cool, crisp night air on his face before it slams closed again. He rubs his arms to warm himself back up.

They talk outside for about an hour or so, enough time that Kent has time to turn over Elks’s chirp in his own mind. He thinks about Connor’s easy-going response to it, his own fight-or-flight instinct. Kent has always been quick-witted in the face of insults — it comes with the territory — but even now, years after he had first grown sensitive to how accurately it reflected his emotional reality, he still finds himself bothered by it.

If Connor was so _like_ him, if they shared the same secret, how was it fair that Connor had a girlfriend to hide behind, some plausible deniability that protected him from any real personal probing? _Is that why he keeps her around?_

The door slides back open. “Okay, love you,” says Connor, turning the handle into the locked position. “Good luck on the discussion board thing.”

“Thanks, good luck on the game—”

“Thanks, I’ll call you tomorrow,” says Connor, and grins. “You know. If we win.”

“Yeah, all right,” says Hannah, slyly. “Bye, get some sleep.”

\--

It takes twelve hours or so, but Jack is finally able to fully decompress from his tense conversation with Bob through extensive — and, frankly, pre-disastrous — party preparations. Shitty had put him to work earlier this morning hanging fairy lights from the crown molding (“you’re tall _and_ gentle, bro, it’s perfect for you”), and he has just finished hefting bags of ice from Lardo’s car and loading it all into the legion of coolers in the kitchen.

He’s not even sure that he’s _going_ to this party yet; hiding up in his room feels like a strong option, and driving his black BMW out to the middle of nowhere for some peace and quiet is a close second. But there’s something about the aura of this year, his last year, that makes him want to stick around. He has never really given these kinds of parties the same amount of attention that the other guys have, and, as captain, it might be nice to show his face for the sake of team solidarity.

It also might be nice to just do something _fun_ for a change.

He used to enjoy parties, before.

It’s true that he enjoyed them a little _too_ much before, but he’s different now, better now.

Jack heads upstairs. He settles into his desk chair for what he hopes will be at least a brief reprieve, before Shitty inevitably cattle-drives the occupants of the Haus into cleaning out the basement, or sweeping off the porch, or—

Shitty yells up the stairs, like he always does, for everything. “Jack, you up here?”

“Yeah,” says Jack, but immediately regrets it. _Fuck._

“Cool, cool, I need to place, like, a thousand trash cans, can I get you to—”

He sighs. 

He smiles.

Jack likes this place, and not necessarily _in spite of_ its quirks. 

“Coming,” he says.

\--

Kent _does_ give the Bruins hell.

It’s a fast-paced game, loud and raucous, everything that Kent has come to expect when he takes the ice at TD Garden. He takes Bob’s advice and attempts a few wraparound goals, managing to get around Rask’s glove to put a point on the board.

Better yet, though, he assists on Connor’s first-ever NHL goal.

The two of them combined are enough to secure a win, and it’s a rush. Kent hates the Bruins more than most people, and, in the hockey world, _most people_ is essentially a clean wash of the whole country outside of New England.

After they’ve showered and cleaned up, Kent makes faces at Connor behind the cameraman as they snap his picture with the _CONNOR WHISK - 1ST NHL GOAL_ puck. Connor gives the camera a toothy grin; he gives Kent a wink between takes.

“Took you long enough,” says Veck, slapping Connor on the shoulder once the cameraman leaves. “Did you know it’s already December?”

“Yeah, I thought you were supposed to be pretty good,” says Nicky. “We were thinking, like, October 15 at the latest. We had a betting pool going—”

“Fuck you guys,” Connor says, grinning. “When was _your_ first NHL goal, eh, Veck? March of your rookie year? It’s hard to remember since it basically happened before I was born—”

_“Listen—”_

Connor makes a quick exit before he can be cast into the laundry bin again.

\--

Sunday games are always early, early enough that Kent feels distinctly odd for being so tired just after three in the afternoon. But, as he sinks into his hotel bed, he’s thankful that it gives him the ability to take a longer nap before dinner.

“Hey,” says Connor, sharply. “Don’t go to sleep. We made a deal.”

Kent furrows his brow, hugging the pillow to his chest. “What fucking deal did we make?”

“You said you’d make the first move when we got to Boston.”

“First move? With you? Haven’t we already—”

“With Jack, dumbass.”

 _Oh. Right._ Kent rubs his face on the pillow and sighs. “I don’t know, man, I—”

“You don’t get to back out now,” Connor says, firm and decisive. “You’ve gotta call him or something, you’re having nightmares basically every other night when we’re at home.”

“That’s not true,” says Kent, even though it is. The numbers don’t lie, and Kent, as a math person, hates that he has to come to terms with that in this case specifically.

“Well, you’re doing it,” says Connor brusquely. “So how are we gonna make this happen?”

Kent shrugs. He sits up, running a hand through his hair. “I really don’t know, man, for real,” he says. “He won’t text me back, he won’t call me, like—I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“I’m telling you, you’ve just gotta show up.”

“Show up _where,_ I don’t know where he fucking lives—”

Connor fixes him with a stare. “Listen,” he says. “I’m gonna tell you something, and you’re not allowed to hold it against me.”

“Fine,” says Kent, concerned in spite of his promise.

“I told you before, like, when we first met, that I used to follow Jack’s career, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Okay, well, get this, he’s my fucking idol,” says Connor, red already, blowing through the background at light speed to save himself the embarrassment of lingering on it for more than a few minutes. “You and him both were. Sue me. I know it’s weird because he’s not — like — but I was so obsessed with him back then and I didn’t stop being obsessed with him when he made NCAA, like, it’s some long-game narrative shit that has me wrecked.”

Kent laughs a little. “Jesus, bud, he’s — it’s not that weird,” he says. “Well, okay, that’s not _why_ it’s weird. I mean, he’s not exactly, like, some underground player who never broke out, you know? People watch college sports, man.” He grins. “And—look, I get being into Jack. Trust me. I get it.”

 _“Anyway,”_ says Connor, clearly not wanting to dwell on this for too much longer, “I follow his teammates on Twitter. Bittle and Ransom and Holster and Knight and everybody.”

Kent squints a little, focusing on the thread of the conversation. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “So—”

“So Bittle tweeted that they’re having a party tonight. A big one. There’s a Facebook event with, like, a thousand invites, and that’s not an exaggeration. They’re calling it an ‘EpiKegster’, which, honestly, _cringe,_ but that’s none of my business—”

Kent is already shaking his head. “No way,” he says. “No way. I’m not crashing a college party to confront my ex, dude, that’s — that’s some _Jersey Shore_ shit.”

“They for sure don’t go to college in _Jersey Shore,”_ Connor says, pedantically. “But you and I both know you’re not above reality TV drama anyway. And you’re a fucking idiot if you think I’m gonna let you skip out on this. It’s a primo opportunity, bro. It’s not like they’re keeping this party a secret.”

Kent glares at him. He runs both hands through his hair this time. He _groans._ “Connor, I can’t,” he says, finally.

Connor fixes him with a stern, sagelike stare. “You miss one-hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, man.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Kent, and falls back onto the bed again. “I just — I can’t. I feel like — I have no idea if he’s gonna blow up at me, like, he almost definitely doesn’t fucking want me around, like—”

Connor shrugs. “What if he’s just scared?” He rests his elbow on his knee, his cheek on his fist. It makes him look like a fish, just a little. Kent smiles a little at how cute it is.

“I don’t think he’s scared of me, man.”

“I don’t know,” Connor says, skeptically. “He’s been through a lot. He might be scared of — you know, trying to go back and rework stuff he regrets. That’s hard to do. I know there are things that I — like, I don’t — there are conversations that I don’t wanna have with people that I love, you know?” Kent _does_ know, of course, what he means: Connor’s infidelity in the face of uncertainty about his sexuality; his tenuous long-distance relationship with Hannah; the _arrangement_ that is clearly not an arrangement at all, and was instead just a device that had been employed to get Kent off his back early on. “I’d be scared as fuck to talk about that shit. I’d be so glad if someone, you know, got the ball rolling for me.”

Kent nods a little; that makes sense to him. “I guess,” he says. “I don’t know if Jack’s like that, though, I — fuck, I just feel like I probably don’t even know him anymore. What if he’s, like, neutral, what if he’s chilled out about me, and this makes him hate me again? Fuck, I don’t want to make things worse—”

“Honestly,” says Connor, “and I mean this with all due respect, but, like, how could things possibly be worse?”

Kent bites his lip. He sighs. “Okay, I guess — yeah, okay,” he says. “That’s fair.”

“So—?”

“Fine,” says Kent. 

Connor _beams._ He’s far too excited for Kent’s liking. “You’ll go?”

“I said fine,” Kent tells him, his stomach already twisting with nerves. “Where is this place, anyway?”

“One of them posted a pin on Snapchat, hold up.” Connor texts Kent a screenshot. “I’m pretty sure it’s, like, a frat house.”

Kent nods. He Googles the address for two-factor verification, and zooms in on the little blue house at 151 Jason Street. It looks like a shithole, to say the least, but Kent has lived in worse places.

“Okay, I’ll — I guess I’ll get a car, it’s not that far of a drive,” he mutters, distracted by drafting a text to the personal concierge whose services are sponsored by his credit card company: _hey im in boston and i need a car for tonight can you get me something cool?_

When Kent looks up, Connor is watching him. Kent raises his eyebrows in question.

“I figured, uh, since we had agreed that you were gonna see Jack and everything — I figured you were gonna be going out for a couple of hours tonight — and Hannah told me that we could FaceTime,” Connor says. “As, like, you know — for the win, for my goal—”

“Okay, cool,” says Kent, laughing. “You know I don’t mind you guys talking on the phone when I’m around anyway, right?”

“No, I mean—” Connor makes a jerk-off motion with his hand. “We’re _FaceTiming.”_

“Oh,” says Kent. “Jesus Christ, okay, I won’t come back til late.”

“Perfect,” says Connor, and grins.

\--

A few hours later, Kent is in a rented Porsche 918 Spyder, flying down the road towards Samwell.

It’s a cold night, and the hand resting on the gearshift is shaking. He breathes in, and out, and in again. He tries to stave off the nausea.

\--

Jack decides to give it the old college try. 

He descends the stairs, mainly to see what’s going on. He’s met with an absolute _sea_ of faces, a mob of bodies pushing past each other and dancing to music that Jack doesn’t recognize, and it’s almost too much. He grips the banister.

But then, he sees Bittle wave at him from the drinks table.

 _I could have a beer,_ Jack thinks.

“Hi,” he says, when he goes to get one.

“I cannot _believe_ you, Jack,” Bittle exclaims, immediately. “You were fixing to hide away in your _room?_ During what could very well be the last ridiculous kegster of your Samwell career?”

“Well, you know,” Jack says. He shifts his weight, pushing a hand into his jeans pocket and gripping his beer with the other. “Something always goes wrong during these parties.”

\--

It’s so loud at the Haus that no one even turns around when the supercar pulls up with a low, seductive growl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a nice long one before The Big Reunion!!! we've finally fucking made it guys!!!
> 
> also, i pulled jack and bitty's dialogue directly from Parse I. i pulled jack's arrival at the party from ngozi's blog notes: "Jack creeping downstairs like a curious house cat and kinda looking around at the 100s of people in his Haus. And right before he backtracks up the stairs (with the thought “Oh man hey you know what I can do in my room? Not this.”), Bitty waves at him. And then they stand and eventually lean and talk about a bunch of stupid stuff."
> 
> also, quebecois is still hard, bear with me. i'm 90% sure that things are accurate, but we'll see if anyone tells me otherwise in the comments lol
> 
> ALSO, i'm still fighting internally with the knowledge that ngozi based cp on a completely impossible premise (that QMJHL players can later go on to play NCAA - THEY CAN'T) and therefore there's no precedent for anything jack does as compared to normal NCAA players, etc etc, it just bothers me but whatever that's the world we live in
> 
> ps: i feel like jack's convo with bob makes him sound like an absolute crabby bitch, and that's not exactly how i wanted to portray him for the First Time, but we caught him at a bad time!! that's all. he'll be nicer and more stable later on! (...i say as i lead into a canon-compliant ek)


	25. E1: epikegster

It had all felt so simple back then.

Kent at seventeen had fit squarely in the archetype of a hopeless romantic. Maybe he’s naive, but Kent at twenty-four hasn’t changed much; in his hopelessness, he still dreams of the same romance, the same future, the same man. It hurts, and it feels stupid sometimes, but Kent has nothing else to hold onto from that time, the one era of his life in which he felt at home, and wanted, and loved, more or less. It hadn’t been perfect, not even close, but it was the best that Kent had ever had. To think of letting it go makes it hard for Kent to breathe. He needs to get back there, someday, to find out what it feels like when it’s real, when it’s all right, when no one is scared or addicted to pills or myopic in the way that only seventeen-year-olds can be.

Tonight, Kent plans on gripping the wheel and applying a course-correction.

\--

Five years ago, they had dreamed of playing together. That is: _together,_ they had dreamed of playing in the NHL, but they had also dreamed of playing _together,_ on the same team, living in the same city, lifting the same Cup. The limitless possibilities had filled Kent’s vision, glorious montages of two soulmates executing their greatest successes alongside each other, _because_ of each other. Best of all, Kent had often imagined the thrill of sharing a routine: leaving the rink in separate cars (Jack insisted that he wouldn’t fit in any of the low-to-the-ground carbon-fiber models that Kent obsessed over) only to pull into the same driveway, to race up the steps and into their own house, to kiss each other softly while the soup simmered, to finally have the courage to voice the words that Kent had desperately hoped that their adolescent selves were both aching to say: _I love you, I want you forever, I won’t ever leave._

Five months ago, Kent had traded black-and-red for white-and-red, saving the blue-and-white-and-red for when he and Jack found each other again. He wonders, now that Jack is poised to begin his own professional career, what lane he’s in, what colors he’s picking. Kent has been in the same lane this whole time, adhering to, seemingly, the only predictable part of his personality. 

More than anything, Kent needs to know if Jack has stopped believing in their shared dream. He needs to know if he’s the only one holding up his end of the bargain, the only one holding onto the tattered cloth of their past, or if Jack has kept following that thread, too, just quieter, in the wings. A long game. Kent wonders if, after all that has happened, if Jack is still the type of person who _can_ play a long game, or if the critical disruption of his once-assured fifty-year plan has forced him into spontaneity. 

Either way, Kent needs to know. As he flies down the highway in his rented Porsche, he goes over what he’s catalogued about Jack’s current situation from news stories, from tweets, from Bob. 

Jack is a senior at Samwell University, the captain of their hockey team, the leading scorer. 

More than likely, Jack will have been hearing from his agent, from the league, from specific teams who want a guy like him. It’s December, and contract talks take months to iron out, especially for a special case like Jack’s. 

Jack is happy (or _happier_ ) now, and he’s also supposedly dating Camilla Collins, the tennis star. This is why, despite what Connor might have been gunning for, Kent knows that this cannot be a romantic mission at heart. Instead, it’s chess: _when you fell apart, how did you place your pieces? Where are you, and where am I? How can we move forward? How will this end?_

Thirty minutes out of Boston, Kent takes the Samwell exit.

 _I can still turn back,_ he thinks as he sits at a red light. He checks his phone, zooming in on the GPS map to get a better view of the distance between this intersection and 151 Jason Street.

He glances up at the light. It’s still red. When he looks back at his phone, he gets a text alert from Connor: _good luck im hopping on this call so DONT COME BACK for like 2hrs. also if you cop out of this ill beat your ass thats a promise not a threat homie._

Kent smiles a little. _okay, loser,_ he texts back. _just got off the highway in samwell._

The light turns green.

With every growl of the engine, the dot on Kent’s map inches closer and closer.

\--

Kent parks on the street outside and runs his hands over the steering wheel, trying to shake his nerves. In the visor mirror, he checks his hair, his teeth, his pores. He unrolls his cuffs and then rolls them back up. He frowns. He does it again. He’s sure he’s in the right place, not only because Google Maps tells him so, but also because there are about two hundred people on the front lawn despite the frigid Massachusetts weather. He can only imagine how many more are inside.

Kent only has eyes for one of them, though.

He takes a deep breath and goes for it.

\--

Kent Parson, leading NHL scorer and effortless _cool guy,_ turns heads all the way up the path and onto the porch. It’s a nice ego boost, a reminder that _some_ people recognize hockey stars in public, as long as they’re in the right crowd. By the time he’s through the front door, his poker face is set, his shoulders are loosened up, and his his hat is on backwards; he’s ready to fucking party.

Kent’s initial assessment of how many people could possibly be inside this rickety old frat house was, regrettably, on the low end.

The _very_ low end, it seems.

Luckily, Kent knows exactly how Jack behaves at parties. They had been to enough of them to develop a pattern. Even when Jack was a fiend for taking things he shouldn’t be taking, or when he was sullen and disinterested, or when he was in the mood to get a leg over on someone, Kent or some girl or whoever, he would always start at the drinks table and end up in a bedroom.

Kent expects that Jack is probably inhabiting the _sullen and disinterested_ headspace more than the _pill fiend_ one these days, so he scans the room for the drinks table. On his way there, he takes selfies with what feels like half of the Boston student population and, at one point, gets pulled sideways into a game of flip cup that, given Kent’s long party-going resume and ample drinking-game experience, should have been an easy steal, but ended up being a respectable (and first-ever) loss for Kent.

Then, he sees a familiar figure leaning up against the wall.

It almost knocks the breath from his lungs.

\--

This isn’t so bad.

Jack’s leaning up against the wall, beer in hand, talking to someone and not making a fool of himself, not yet. It’s been a while since he has tried this out, worked these muscles, restrung these neural pathways. It’s good — better than he remembers parties being, before. Although, on second thought, maybe that’s just because he doesn’t remember much from the parties he used to go to. 

“Make sure you lock your door, Bittle,” Jack says, sagely, a little bit of a lightweight nowadays. He isn’t drunk, but he feels good, so that must mean that he’s doing enough things differently tonight, that something is ending up all right. “Last time we had one of these, Shitty had a guy get sick in his room. Oh boy — you know that hole in the door to Shitty’s room? A football player kicked it in during the last epic kegster.”

“Oh, no,” Bittle gasps.

\--

“Oh, no,” says the blonde twink standing far too close to Jack. In a flash, Kent recognizes him from the NCAA coverage as Eric Bittle, Jack’s winger.

 _That’s dangerous,_ Kent thinks, sizing Bittle up, going through the Jack’s-type checklist in his head (Blonde? Check. Petite? Check. Nice ass? Check.) and quickly catching up to what he’s seeing play out in front of him. _Once upon a time, I was Jack’s little blonde winger, too._

“Yeah,” says Jack, clearly emboldened by whatever he’s drinking. Kent would recognize that tell-tale grin anywhere, anytime. “Yeah, I think he or his buddy threw up in there? I had to drag them both out of the house.”

“All by yourself?” says Bittle, fawningly. 

“Well, yeah,” says Jack. “And then a bunch of them turned up out of nowhere! Must have been their whole o-line. Big guys, eh?” Jack lifts his arms to imitate the size of a football player, as if he wasn’t six feet tall and two hundred pounds himself. “I wasn’t even thinking when I turned that fire extinguisher on them, but it freaked them out enough that they left with the drunk guy.”

Bittle has his hand over his heart. “That must have been so _scary,”_ he drawls.

“It wasn’t that bad,” says Jack. “But that party took up two issues of the Swallow.”

“Good lord, I’m tweeting that,” says Bittle, thrusting a hand into his jacket pocket. “I’m surprised you’re not chirping me for having my nose buried in my phone.”

“Well, if it’s out,” says Jack, surprising himself, “we should take a selfie, or something. Together.”

 _“There_ it is,” says Bittle, knowingly.

“I’m serious!” Jack insists. “You know. Like, ‘Bitty’s first big kegster.'" He leans over to peer at Bittle’s screen, and he’s _close,_ way too close. “You could put it on your blog. I mean, I don’t get selfies, but you’ve—”

Kent watches this little blonde kid looking up at Jack, half-listening to his rambling story, his huge eyes and flushed cheeks betraying the innocent, smitten expression that Kent knows all too well. He had looked at Jack like that, once. He’d do it again, if Jack let him.

It’s almost too much for Kent to bear. It’s like watching Jack try to flirt with some generic-brand version of Kent himself; if it weren’t so deeply cutting to watch, it would be almost comical.

Kent’s nerves are muted by the irritation burning up under his skin.

He can’t take any more of this.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it myself,” Kent says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Jack Zimmermann. At a party. Taking a selfie.”

Jack turns.

“Oh my gosh,” says Bittle, but Kent ignores him.

“Kent,” says Jack, and it does something to Kent’s composure to hear Jack say his name for the first time in _so long._ He wants to hear him say it again, and again, and again, and maybe in a nicer tone, next time.

“Hey, Zimms,” says Kent, lifting his Solo cup in what he hopes is a neutral greeting. And then, as coolly and coyly as possible, he says, “Did you miss me?”

\--

Bittle starts to exclaim at the sight of an NHL player in his house, but Kent cuts him out of their conversational triangulation with the way he angles his body, face-forward, right at Jack. When some guy in a cut-off denim jacket drags Bittle off into the depths of the house, Kent barely even notices.

Jack, looking stunned, stays rooted to the spot. “Kent,” he says under his breath, again, like a broken record, too muffled, too jumpy, two minutes too late.

“At your service,” says Kent, and cringes internally at his own choice of words. _Fuck, why—_

“Why are you here?” Jack punches out, his diction clipped and choppy like some bad Speak-and-Spell robot.

“I missed you,” Kent says, softening his earlier statement, smoothing it out into a genuine assessment of the situation.

Jack’s jaw tightens. That’s not a good sign.

“Can’t we just — talk?” says Kent, hoping that it doesn’t sound like the desperate plea that it is.

\--

“Can’t we just — talk?” Kent demands. Jack remembers this: Kent directing the flow of their interactions, Jack following along. He had felt differently about it then than he does now, but there’s something still very nostalgic about the edge to Kent’s voice. It’s not all bad.

Jack sighs. He glances around, knowing all too well that there are no private places in the Haus right now where they could talk besides his bedroom. He’s not sure that he wants to do this at all, but if he tries to kick Kent out, he’ll make a scene, and that’s worse.

“Let’s go,” he says, and Kent nods, jogging up the stairs behind him. They step over the caution tape strung between the railings, and Jack leads him down the hall to his bedroom door. 

Maybe it’s all the history books he’s been reading, but it feels like he’s going to war.

\--

The door shuts behind Jack with a quiet _snick._ It’s an incredibly welcome barrier against the din from downstairs, but it doesn’t render the room entirely silent, nor even particularly quiet. That said, there’s enough dead air, enough awkward tension hanging between them, for Kent to start feeling his nerves really take hold.

“Hey, Zimms,” he says, because there’s nothing else to say, too much else to say.

“Hi, Kent,” says Jack, awkwardly. He remains standing, his posture tense, one hand in his pocket. Kent remembers Jack doing that at parties, to hide how his hands shook when he was anxious, to allow himself the grounding touch of his fingertips against the ever-present pill bottle. Kent furrows his brow, just a little. He wonders if Jack still takes pills.

“I should probably explain, right?” Kent says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, arms crossed.

“Yeah,” says Jack, giving him very little to work with in terms of conversation. This is typical for Jack, though, or it was the last time they had conversations with any regularity. Kent’s hoping that it’s not a bad sign, all things considered.

He takes a deep breath. Kent has, of course, rehearsed what he wanted to say to Jack when he first saw him. He had gone over it in his mind again and again for the whole drive to Samwell, not to mention countless times in the years before that, curled up around his pillow after a nightmare or zoning out in the shower or half-watching a movie alone on his couch. 

Now that he’s here, though, he can’t remember a single thing that he had planned to say.

“I wanted to see you,” is what comes out of his mouth. 

\--

“I wanted to see you,” says Kent, and Jack’s stomach flips.

He’s not sure if it’s his anxiety flaring up or if it’s something else, something that he can’t quite put his finger on. Jack feels entirely off-kilter, from seeing Kent, from drinking a little, from getting close to Bittle like that, from having a raging kegster in his house disrupting his nightly routine. He’s having a hard time processing his own thoughts, his own feelings. It’s hard to shake himself out when he’s like this. He used to have the _best_ pills for that, but he doesn’t take those pills anymore. The new ones, the safer ones, don’t do it for him like the old ones did.

“Why?” is all he can muster.

\--

“Why?” Jack asks, clipped and uncomfortable.

Kent leans against Jack’s dresser, trying to ease the physical tension in the room as much as he can by himself. Jack, for his part, is staking out the area in front of his desk. “I’m not trying to ambush you or anything,” Kent says, his voice lowering in register to avoid sounding like a threat. “I just — I realize that’s how it looks.”

Jack just blinks at him. Kent sighs.

“I just — things seemed to fit together tonight,” he says, and he’s rambling now, filling the space just because he can, because he feels like someone should. “I was in Boston, and the party was all over social media, and I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I know it was — probably a stupid idea. But — I’m here, and — you’re here, and — it’s so—”

He can feel himself starting to break.

“It’s so good to see you, Jack,” he says, gratefully.

\--

“It’s so good to see you, Jack,” says Kent, and there’s a note of tenderness in his voice.

Jack is surprised by that. He had figured that Kent would have written him off entirely by now, lost in the sea of irrelevancy, a detail of his past that was cast in shadow as soon as the bright lights of his future started heating up and bursting on, lining his path to the draft, to the Calder, to the Cup.

The fact that Kent Parson — NHL superstar, best American-born player in the history of the league, league points leader, charismatic, prodigy, hero — _ever_ thinks about Jack Zimmermann — hockey wunderkind, wasted attempt at a legacy, rich-kid addict fuck-up, pathetic, failure, prop — is patently unbelievable. It’s almost _laughable._

Kent’s surely above that now, above him now. Jack can’t believe that Kent would be here, making an appearance, for any other reason but to rub it in his face, to insert himself into Jack’s safe zone, his recovery space, his grounds for growth, and make Jack’s world turn on Kent’s axis again, if only for one night.

“Why?” Jack asks, disbelieving.

\--

“Why?” Jack asks, tentatively.

The edge of the dresser is digging into Kent’s hip, so he straightens back up. “I’ve just — been hearing a lot about you, like, how you’re doing, and — I talked to your dad the other day, but—” He hesitates. He’s not sure what Jack wants to hear in this moment, what would be an overstep and what would be a welcome de-escalation. “I wanted to hear it from you, how you’re doing. I wanted to see if you’re, you know, good.” He messes with his watch band, unhooking it and re-hooking it a few times. “I really hope you’re good, Jack.”

Jack watches him for a moment, his eyes on Kent’s clicking watch band clasp, on Kent’s fingers at his wrist there. “I’m good,” he says, mildly.

Kent smiles a little, as warm as he can. “Good,” he says, and then cracks a grin.

\--

“Good,” says Kent, and grins with the same lights dancing in his eyes that Jack remembers from before. He used to get lost in them, sometimes, as cliche as it is, but that was more due to the fact that he was always faded, staring into Kent’s face like he was the only thing in the world, like he existed purely for Jack to memorize, to ground himself in, to hold onto when he needed to be held down.

Now that Jack thinks about it, maybe it _does_ make sense that Kent’s here. He still gets texts from him, sometimes, on a muted iMessage thread that he only remembers is there when he accidentally backs out from individual conversations into his inbox at large.

He hasn’t read them in any depth, doesn’t click on them as a matter of personal policy, but he has always assumed that they were life updates, game details, things that Kent would want Jack to know about, to congratulate him on, to measure himself against. They had always been competitive, sometimes in a jovial manner, and sometimes not. Jack isn’t in a place to be jovial about success (or the lack thereof), so he doesn’t engage for his own sake, because that’s what his therapist had suggested at the outset of his recovery. If he didn’t have her to help him manage his impulses, he’d probably click on one of those message previews one of these days and figure out what came after _Kent Parson: hey zimms, i…_ or the classic _Kent Parson: i miss you, do..._ which Jack catches a glimpse of with some amount of regularity. Instead, he had simply passed her his phone over the glass-topped coffee table in her office, and she had muted the thread for him, because he hadn’t known how. 

Now that he’s looking at Kent in the flesh, though, it feels different. Allowable. Safer, somehow, as paradoxical as that may be.

Jack lets himself smile a little, too, and Kent’s eyes crease at the corners.

“It’s so good to see you,” Kent says, again.

\--

Kent can’t help himself. “It’s so good to see you,” he repeats, grinning around it, letting himself savor it for a moment, the fact that he can stand here, in this room, and look at Jack, and know that he’s all right.

Jack is smiling, too, and it’s the sweetest thing that Kent can imagine.

Kent takes a deep breath. When he exhales, he tips his head back, closes his eyes, and re-centers himself. When he looks at Jack again, Jack is looking back. 

“Another thing is, like — I just want to make this as easy as possible,” Kent says, and he means it. “When you sign somewhere, we’re gonna have to see each other at least twice a year. I don’t want to face off against you on the ice and have that be — the first time, you know, since everything happened.”

After a moment of consideration, Jack nods. “All right,” he says. “That makes sense.” Kent can tell that, in Jack’s mind, the pass has connected; this conversation now has a utility in a way that it didn’t before. _Smooth feathers, be diplomatic, make hockey easier._

“And I want you to know,” Kent says, rushing in, laying all his cards on the table, folding early in an attempt to clear the air. “I’m not doing this because of” —he waves a hand back and forth between them— “us. Or whatever. Like, all that shit. I’m just trying to — see where you stand. If we can be — I just want to relax. I just want us both to be able to relax about it, Jack, because I know that if it’s fucking with _my_ mental, it’s _definitely_ fucking with yours—”

Jack averts his eyes, then. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he admits.

Kent bites his lip, runs his tongue over some chapped skin there. He nods. “So — can we just — catch up?”

Jack blinks. “That’s it?”

“For now, I guess,” says Kent, unsure of what Jack was expecting him to say. “I mean, later, if you wanted me to beat you in flip cup or something, I’ve got a loss on the board that I’m trying to recover from.”

That tugs the shadow of a smile out of Jack, and, in return, a bigger smile out of Kent. He breathes. He thinks, _This is going okay._

“I’ve been okay,” Jack says, and leans up against his desk, folding his arms over his chest casually, but still guarded. “Playing hockey, mostly. Going to class.”

Kent tries to relax his posture, too. He shifts his weight and rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve watched your games,” he says. “Some of them. You look really good out there.”

That surprises Jack, and Kent can tell, because Jack has never been very good at hiding his emotions. Either that, or Kent has always been fairly good at reading the tells on Jack’s face. “You watch my games?” he asks, dumbly, like a jock in some teen movie.

Kent nods and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. You look like you’re ready to tear it up in the big leagues, man.”

Jack doesn’t quite believe him, it seems, but he takes the compliment anyway. “I’ve been working hard,” he says, as though Kent is some beat reporter from the local paper. “I’m trying to get more consistent.”

“What about, you know, I don’t know.” Kent laughs a little. “I mean, how’s school going? I don’t even know how to ask about college or whatever. You were always the smart one between the two of us.”

Jack smiles at that, a real smile, a teasing smile. “You did my math homework on the bus all the time,” he says, and Kent feels himself warm up noticeably at the acknowledgement of a memory from back then, from their time together. 

“Yeah," says Kent, laughing a little. "Well — what do you do?”

“I’m a history major,” says Jack, eyes cast downward toward his desk again, like he’s divulging some extremely personal information.

Kent smiles. _That fits._ “Sounds like a lot of reading.”

“It is,” says Jack, “but I don’t mind.”

The air goes still again, a lull in energy, but the gap that it hollows out between them doesn't seem so wide anymore.

“It’s kind of wild, seeing all of this,” says Kent, after a moment. “Where you live now and everything, what you’re doing. It’s so—different.” _From what I expected, from what we expected, from what you wanted — maybe._

“It’s good,” says Jack. “I like it here. It’s a beautiful campus, and — I have friends.”

Kent laughs a little. He understands what that must mean to Jack, who had been perpetually friendless before the Q, who had attached to Kent like some kind of emotional octopus. Kent, of course, had attached right back, just as firmly. “Yeah, my housemate told me your teammates tweet about you a lot.”

“Oh, Bittle,” says Jack. “Right.” After a minute, he furrows his brow. “Who’s your housemate?”

“Connor Whisk,” says Kent, and smiles, because he likes Connor. He’ll take any excuse to talk about him, to gas him up, to put his name out there, especially when he’s talking to the media. “He follows college hockey a lot more than I do, so. He knows everything.”

Jack uncrosses his arms; that’s a good sign. He’s warming up. Kent crosses the distance to the desk, leaning one knee on the chair and squinting at the pictures that Jack has pinned up on the wall there. “This is the team?”

“Yeah,” says Jack, and taps each person, tells Kent their name. It’s diligent; it’s sweet. It’s the kind of thing that Jack would think is very important: giving each person the recognition that they deserve, no matter the audience.

“Cool,” Kent says. “Oh, shit, this one of your mom — Christmas goddess vibes. That gown is crazy.”

Jack laughs, just a little, the tips of his ears red. “It was for a Vanity Fair house tour video,” he says. “She doesn’t just dress like that, you know.”

“I _do_ know, I’ve met her once or twice,” says Kent, sarcastically, and he grins. He’s spent more time with Alicia Zimmermann than he’s spent with his own mother, and that’s an undeniable fact. Jack, recognizing this, smiles again, apologetically. It’s starting to feel more natural, this banter. Kent has missed this so, so much.

His gaze scans to the next picture, one of Jack and a blonde girl cuddled up close to each other in the cold, both grinning at the camera, crowding the lens in front of the hazy, out-of-focus backdrop of some outdoor public skating rink.

“Is this Camilla?” Kent asks, feigning relative ignorance. He’s stress-Googled her enough times to pick her out of a crowd, no questions asked, so he definitely recognizes her here.

Jack nods, and then gives Kent an odd look. “How do you—”

Kent shrugs. He tries to play it cool, but he’s not sure that he’s succeeding. “Your dad said something on his podcast about you guys.”

“Mm.” 

All of a sudden, Jack seems chillier than he had before; perhaps Kent had taken this casual familiarity attitude a step too far. He braces himself with a hand on Jack’s desk and bites his lip, eyes flicking over Jack’s face, reading, guessing, coming up dry.

“I didn’t mean to, like, get into your business,” Kent says, quietly, eyes finding their way back to the picture. “I just — I feel like I used to know what was going on in your life, like, we spent every minute of every day together. And now — it’s just weird, like, knowing that you’re — far away, with people I’ve never heard of in places I’ve never been. I don’t know. It’s just weird.”

“Is it weird?” Jack asks him, impossibly level. “Still?”

Kent glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, it’s still weird,” he says, a little defensively. “Mostly just — the big stuff. It just sucks that I have to learn important stuff about your life from the news, you know? Like, the fact that you went into the NCAA, or that you have a girlfriend—”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” says Jack, bluntly. “We’re not dating.”

Kent’s brain stalls. “What?”

“Me and Camilla. We broke up.”

Kent turns to face him, now, taking his eyes off the picture. “Oh,” he says.

Jack glances over Kent’s face. “We broke up. She — her schedule is — she travels a lot for tennis stuff, for competitions. I didn't want to drag her down, so I made the decision to — let her have the space she needed.” 

Kent blinks. “Oh,” he says again, feeling a flash of righteous irritation, a shade of what he had felt when he had seen Connor’s Snapchat notifications. This was a less-drastic version of their own story; Jack always had to take the most dramatic step possible, to overcorrect whenever things became shaky, to attain the role of _hero_ of his own story.

On the other hand, he wonders if the nature of his mission has altered its course slightly. He wonders, now, what his _own_ chances are. 

Kent buries that for now, though, because the original mission has to come first.

“You’re gonna be about as busy as she is in a year or so, huh?”

Jack takes a second to catch on, but when he does, he shrugs. “We’ll see,” he says. 

Jack is staring at something on his desk. Kent stares at Jack for a while, but not at his face; he keeps his eyes trained on his shoulder because it feels less confrontational. Jack has always had nice shoulders, anyway. The steady thrum of the bass from whatever music is playing downstairs comes up through the floor, fills the room with faint vibrations. 

Kent bites his lip, not wanting the relative ease of conversation that they’ve managed to achieve to start slipping away. He wants to live in this moment, to tread water here, to trade pleasantries, over and over again: _it’s good to see you, I missed you, it’s good to see you, I missed you, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good._

But it’s easier to talk about hockey.

“I heard you went to Detroit,” says Jack, as though he has to coach himself into saying anything at all.

“Yeah, I got a good contract,” says Kent.

“I heard,” says Jack. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” says Kent. He hesitates. He almost doesn’t want to go down this road just yet; he wants to linger here, in peace, for just a little while longer. But, at the same time, the opening for his information-gathering operation is there, now, and if he’s going to make this a fruitful trip, he has to take opportunities as they arise. Jack can’t be expected to be conversationally-compliant for the long term, even if the long term is, say, twenty more minutes. “You must be looking at contracts and stuff yourself by now, right?”

Jack nods, his jaw tightening. Kent runs his tongue over the backs of his teeth, thinking through his available angles of approach. His impending contract deal is probably a touchy subject for Jack, if his and Bob’s conversations about Jack’s future are anything like they used to be in both intensity and frequency, and he doesn’t want to send Jack into a spiral.

He just needs to know what to _do,_ what Jack is willing to do, with him or otherwise.

Kent had always assumed that, if the team alignment worked out, the rest of it would fall into place. He'd start living with Jack, for real this time instead of just camping out at his billet house for a week at a time and then switching. They’d wait up for each other, save episodes of TV shows to watch with each other, plan a grocery list with the other’s favorite foods. They’d kiss, maybe, and hold each other in bed. They’d talk about it, this time. They’d have to, to make it real. To make it _stay._

“I was thinking, uh.” Jack runs a hand over the back of his neck. “I was thinking about the Falconers.”

Kent’s eyebrows go up. “You’d go to an expansion team?”

“Well, they’re Cup-competitive,” says Jack, a little defensively. “I’ve been talking to Dad and Uncle Mario about it. They both think—”

Kent almost can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Your dad’s cool with an expansion team?” he asks. “I figured that, if you got to choose, he’d push you towards something _good.”_

“Well,” says Jack, frowning a little. “You did just fine on an expansion team.”

“Yeah, because I had to,” says Kent. “You could pick anywhere you wanted, though. If I had been able to pick, you know where I’d be.” He smiles a little, trying to ease Jack out of his hockey-stress haze. “I can move around a little easier now, but I’ve still been holding off on going where I really want to go,” he says, and meets Jack’s eyes. He feels a great need to make his position very clear. “I’m still down for Montréal if you are.”

Jack opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then closes it again. Eventually, he manages to mumble, “You just signed a new contract, though.”

“A one-year,” says Kent, and Jack can’t seem to look away from him, now. “I’ve been thinking about it, man.” He lowers his voice, just enough that Jack can tell that he’s being genuine. “Nothing’s changed for me.”

Jack fixes Kent with his characteristic hyper-focused expression. “You still want—?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, readily. “I’ve been waiting for you this whole time, banking good numbers so I can move wherever, whenever I need to.” He loosens up his shoulders a little, feeling the tension creep back up into them. "You’re telling me now that you’re not dead-set on Montréal? You’d go to Providence, for real?”

“It might not be the Falconers,” says Jack, backtracking. “I don’t know, I haven’t made any hard and fast decisions.”

Kent’s eyes flick over Jack’s tight expression. “You have _no clue?”_ he asks, after a minute.

Jack sighs. He leans back on the desk again, balancing himself with his hands gripping the lip of the wood, knuckles white. “I mean,” he mutters. “It could be Montréal, it could be LA, okay? I don’t know.” He sounds frustrated. Historically, when his voice had taken on this kind of edge, Jack had been mere moments from abdicating his role in the conversation, already messing with the cap on his pill bottle, ready to fade out.

Kent watches him for a moment. He tries, spontaneously, for a compromise. “What about Detroit?” he asks, softly.

Jack groans. He looks like he’s on the verge of tearing his hair out. Kent has seen this display a thousand times before, maybe more. Jack would get like this every time they talked about the draft, any time it wormed its way into some talk radio show that they were listening to while driving around at night. This particular brand of stress must have worked its way in deep for it to flare up now, all these years later. “I — I don’t _know,_ okay?”

All at once, Kent knows what he has to do. 

The new, measured Jack is a strange beast, an unknowable thing; Kent is used to the Jack that reacted to stress by smashing motel mirrors and chasing pills with vodka. He has no idea what to do with a sober Jack, a post-rehab Jack, who probably talks things out with a _therapist,_ just like Kent once had to after his own stint in a clinical care facility.

But _this_ Jack is familiar. This Jack had _needed_ Kent, once, to pull him up and out of the recesses of his own mind, to ease his worry, to provide him with some form of a distraction. And, back then, they had favorite ones, a playbook of sorts. Kent had memorized them all, for the love of the game. 

As he gazes at Jack, Kent's heart melts into a globby, pulsating mass in his chest. He feels as though, in the face of Jack’s visible pain, it might burst. He could bleed out, right here, on Jack's bedroom floor, and leave less of a mess for Jack to clean up than what Jack had left for him. 

He steps forward, just a little, and Jack’s eyes meet his.

Kent watches his face, and when he sees the openness there, the wonderment, the _recognition,_ he closes the distance between them. 

He kisses him, soft.

Jack stills, at first, but he becomes pliant against Kent’s body, easing into the comfort of something both familiar and strange. His hands roam up into Kent’s hair, and he pushes his hat to the floor as an afterthought, just swatting away some unnecessary barrier to his ability to twist his fingers in Kent’s wavy blonde hair. When the hat hits the floor, though, Jack draws back slightly at the sharp sound. Kent breathes softly, a near-whine against his lips.

“Parse,” Jack starts to say, but Kent covers his words with another kiss. Jack falls silent again as their mouths work against each other, as though it were all only yesterday, as if they still spent every solitary moment like this, crowded up against furniture in Jack’s bedroom, making out and getting hot.

It’s slow, this kiss. Kent draws it out, and Jack brings him in. His hands grasp at Kent’s hips, his shoulders, his collar, and he pulls him close enough to taste, to devour, to possess. Kent presses up as he pulls Jack down, his hand against the back of Jack’s head, teasing his tongue against Jack’s as he tries to stand tall against him. Kent wants maximum exposure; he wants skin-to-skin. He doesn’t know what Jack wants, but he likes to think that it’s _him,_ just like it used to be.

Jack has a hand in Kent’s hair and another running up and down his side under his shirt, his knuckles grazing over the lean muscle there, the tattoos he’s never seen, the form that has belonged to no one else, not ever, because Kent has a one-track mind and an unhealthy attachment style. Kent arches forward a little, pressing their hips together, and Jack bites down on his lip a little harder than Kent thinks that he probably meant to.

This is going so, so much better than Kent had any right to expect that it would. He plays with Jack’s thick, dark hair as he opens his mouth up for him, lets Jack run his tongue over the backs of his teeth, lets him take whatever he wants. He’d give him more, if he asked. He’d give him anything, if he wanted it.

Kent trails his hands down Jack’s back, feeling his shoulders, the muscle groups that work against Kent’s palms as Jack runs his own hands up and down Kent’s sides. When Kent tucks his fingers in the front of Jack’s waistband, he feels Jack twitch a little, involuntarily. He grins against Jack’s mouth, and their teeth clack together. Jack, always laser-focused in these moments, frowns at the interruption of his rhythm. He kisses along Kent’s jaw, his neck, until Kent draws him back up to his mouth.

\--

Jack is, admittedly, a little tipsy, but he’s not sure that he wouldn’t still be doing this if he was sober, so it’s a wash, really.

The thing is, it feels so _good._

Kent has always just let him take control, has always melded against Jack’s form, a warm weight, a lithe figure, a live wire under Jack’s hands. Jack loves the feeling of Kent against him, wanting him, ready to kiss and be kissed, to touch and be touched. It’s exactly what Jack had wanted back when he was a mess of hormones and stress, and Jack’s a little surprised, a little amused, that it still feels so addictive now, now that he’s older and managing himself better, now that he wouldn’t necessarily lose his head over any opportunity to get laid.

He has Kent by the hair, by the mouth, by the hips. He has Kent right now, the same way he always did, and Jack thinks, faintly, as much as he _can_ think about anything right now, that he might have been an idiot for reading things so wrong for so long. If Kent was always willing to kiss him like this, if he was always so easy to tease back open into this state of vulnerability, why did Jack —

Kent’s fingers skim over the sensitive skin below his waistband, and he feels that familiar heat pooling in his belly. He feels Kent grin against him, and when their teeth nick each other, Jack huffs and drags kisses down Kent’s smooth jaw instead. He wonders how far they’ll take this, how long they’ll kiss like this, what else Kent might be willing to do. He wonders what he needs to do to get him there. If Kent is _this_ receptive, Jack’s more than interested in taking it to its natural endpoint. 

Jack is ever an opportunist, except for when he fucks it up at the last minute. That’s happened before. It has happened, notably, between the two of them.

Jack stills a little as that thought forms itself somewhere in the back of his hazy brain. He hates how much it feels like a prophecy; now that it’s there, all he can think about is this whole thing going sideways because of _him._

Kent still seems interested in getting what he came for, at least as far as Jack can tell. He’s playing with the button on Jack’s jeans, and it’s driving Jack crazy. At the same time, though, Jack’s starting to wonder if Kent really wants this just for the feeling of it all, or if this is part of some long game.

Jack is an opportunist, but Kent is diligence personified.

He’s always gunning for _something,_ out-working and out-performing everyone around him, even Jack. Perhaps especially Jack.

What’s he working for right now, with his hands in Jack’s back pockets? What does Jack have that he wants? What does Jack have that Kent could even use, that he couldn’t get anywhere else? What could he give to a man who has everything?

Jack drafts a few kisses against his neck on the way back to Kent’s collarbone. “Kenny,” he says, and swallows as Kent bares more of his throat. He has to back away; he has to cut this off at the head before he fucks it up again. His eyes linger on a small scar on the underside of Kent’s chin. “I can’t do this,” he says, breathy and quiet.

Kent freezes for a second. “Jack, _come on,”_ he says, in the same annoyed voice that had always made Jack cringe back in the Q. He suspected that it was just part of how Kent communicated, brash and pushy and straightforward to a fault, but, to Jack, it had always felt like a knife in the heart.

“No, I—” Jack starts, trying to assert that he’s serious, but Kent rocks his shoulder up, nudges Jack’s head a little, leans to kiss him there. He captures Jack’s lips with his at the same time that he drags his hand around Jack’s hip to feel at the front of his jeans, and Jack says, stupidly, _“uh—”_

Kent applies just the right amount of pressure, almost like he’s done this a thousand times before, almost like he knows exactly how to get Jack to give in, to gasp against him, to roll his hips and lose control. He drags his thumb across the denim, and Jack _does_ gasp. _“Kenny—”_ He tries to grip at Kent’s wrist, to render him still.

Kent moves back from where he had been pressing kisses along Jack’s jaw. He considers Jack for just a second, cheeks flushed with heat, eyes sparking with irritation. He makes an impatient, frustrated noise. “Zimms, just fucking _stop thinking_ for once and listen to me,” he says.

\--

“Zimms, just fucking _stop thinking_ for once and listen to me,” he bites out. He’s desperate, and hurt, and worry is flooding his senses, clouding his mind. He doesn’t want Jack to back away like that, to stop his hand, to leave him cold again, to _reject, reject, reject._

 _We can make it work,_ he wants to say. _We can have this again, what we used to have. I’m trying to show you, why can’t you see, I thought you would see—_

Instead, he appeals to what he thinks might be his best angle, his only real bargaining chip. “I’ll tell the GMs you’re on board and they can free up cap space,” he says. In front of him, Jack is still pulling away. He feels his heart clawing at his chest, and, suddenly, he’s spinning out, grasping at anything that will make Jack understand. “Then you can be done with this shitty team. You and me—” 

_We can make it work, we can have this again, what we used to have, but better this time. Right this time._

Jack’s expression hardens; his eyes narrow. Kent feels his own breath hitch in his chest. He knows, instantly, that he’s crossed a line. 

“Get out,” Jack says.

Kent stares.

He almost can’t believe that he let this happen. It had been going so well, and now Jack’s upset, and it’s his fault. _Again._ “Jack,” he says, and comes close. He doesn’t want to lose him like this, not again, not when it doesn’t have to be this way. He wants to go back to five minutes ago, when Jack’s mouth was warm and hot against his, when he had felt like he was flying, like Jack was the only person in the whole world, like all the pieces of Kent’s shitty, fragmented life were finally, mercifully, starting to slot back together again. Jack’s eyes flick over his face, quick and assessing. Kent kisses him, hard and pleading.

Jack _recoils._ “You can’t — you don’t come to my _fucking school unannounced—”_

All at once, in the face of what he’s now sure is a lost cause, Kent explodes. The hurt he’s held inside the cage in his chest for years tears out of him, accusatory and painful. “Because you shut me out—”

“—and corner me in my room—” 

“I’m trying to _help—”_

“—and expect me to do whatever you want—”

Kent could _cry._ From frustration or anger or hopelessness, he’s not sure. “Fuck— _Jack!”_ he yells, bailing, unable to stay keyed up like this when all he wants is to lean against him, to bring them both back around, to make things right. He brings his hands up to his face, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyes, but then he decides that he is not willing to let Jack see him break down. His hands curl into fists; he tries to squeeze them as tight as he can. He remembers the lesson that his father taught him: _the quickest way to stop thinking about pain is to make something else hurt._ He digs half-moons into his palms with his fingernails and tries to get himself under control.

His heart is hammering in his chest. He can’t lose him again. He doesn’t want Jack to push him away. He doesn’t know how to fix this, but he has to try. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, desperately. “That I miss you? _I miss you,_ okay?”

He does let out a sob, then, and buries his face in Jack’s neck for a moment. He looks up into Jack’s face, searching his eyes for any sign of softness. “I miss you,” he whispers, because it’s the truest thing in the world. Missing Jack Zimmermann is, in this moment, forever and always, the only thing that matters to Kent Parson, the boy who has everything except for the only thing that he wants anymore, the only thing he thinks that he may have ever truly needed. Meanwhile, Jack is here, with nothing that he once thought that he wanted but everything that he needs.

Jack is holing up in a new kind of home that he has built for himself, quietly edging towards stability, healing, thriving, while Kent runs out his clock by living other people’s dreams while he himself is loveless, lost, and alone.

How many times had he tried to reach out to Jack, to tell him this exact thing, in those exact words? How many times had he typed out some variant of _I miss you,_ some confession that was meant to hit home, some plea that Jack was meant to answer? Had Jack ever even bothered to read them?

Jack’s eyes remain cold. “You always say that,” he says, and in that moment, Kent breaks. 

\--

They’re sixteen, and they’re slinging pucks at each other in an endless string of passing drills, the only ones on the ice as the clock on the wall clicks over to read _6:00._ It’s still dark outside this far north, but their flames have been burning bright for hours already.

“One more time,” Kent calls to Jack across the ice, and they take their places at the blue line. They skate all the way down, zipping the puck from stick to stick, slowing down and speeding up, deftly catching the too-warm puck as it skitters over the ice. When Jack buries it, Kent beams at him from behind his cage.

“You’re too good for words,” Kent tells him, emphatically, full of joy and wonder in a way that Jack can’t help but be drawn to. He’s only known Kent for a few months, but he doesn’t remember what it was like to not know his face, his voice, his mannerisms.

Jack flushes and grins back. “You always say that,” he says, self-consciously. Kent grins.

\--

They’re seventeen, and they’re messing around in Jack’s childhood bed, staying over at Jack’s parents’ house in Brossard for a week or two. It’s Christmastime, and Kent is here because he didn’t want to be _there,_ in New York, with his own family. The idea of getting on a bus back to Buffalo seemed to suck the life out of him in a way that Jack only barely understood; their family dynamics were both complicated, but it was different for Kent, different than how Jack himself felt stressed when his parents expected too much of him. Kent’s parents didn’t seem to expect anything at all.

But Kent’s happy here, bright here, and he brushes the back of his hand over Jack’s arm as they cuddle up, warm and comfortable, under Jack’s covers. “Look at you,” Kent says, softly, like he has only ever had eyes for Jack, like he has never wanted to do anything other than look at him. “You’re so gorgeous, Zimms.”

Jack laughs a little, his stomach swooping sweetly, his gut twisting nervously, because he has never been confronted with something this real before. “You always say that,” he says, because he doesn’t know how to say it back. Kent smiles a little. He kisses him.

\--

They’re nearly eighteen, and they’re driving around aimlessly in the dark, trying to ignore the fact that there are only twenty-one days until the draft, until they fly apart from each other, until things change forever.

Things have already changed, though, somewhat; Jack is more on edge than he has been since they won the Memorial Cup, and Kent is more needy than he has been since they started doing whatever it is that they’re doing.

“Pull over,” says Kent, all of a sudden, and Jack does, steering slowly and deliberately over the black ice and into a church parking lot.

The gear shift rattles between them as Kent leans across it to tug Jack by his coat collar into a kiss. He tastes like Molson’s and Marlboro, and Jack makes it his personal mission to draw that taste out of him, to replace it with whatever Jack himself tastes like — which, in all fairness, is probably also the Molson’s, but not so much the Marlboro.

Kent backs up just enough to look Jack dead in the eyes, the moonlight casting his face in a watercolor bleed of blues and whites and yellows. His mouth is soft, and his eyes are shining; Jack thinks he looks impossibly beautiful like this. He wishes that Kent would kiss him again.

“I want to tell you, Zimms,” Kent says, and he must still be a little drunk, because he looks like he’s trying very hard to focus on Jack’s face. If it’s not the beer, then it must be the nerves, and Kent is never nervous — not like Jack is, anyway. “I need you to know something.”

“Know what?” Jack says, feeling the cutting edge of anxiety prying his vulnerabilities apart, working him open and flooding him with fear. This always happens when people speak seriously to him these days. Kent _should_ know that, but he does it anyway.

Kent’s gaze steadies somewhat, and Jack sees that Kent’s eyes are the same ice-blue as his own.

“I love you,” says Kent, his fist still gripping Jack’s coat collar, his thumb radiating heat against Jack’s neck, pressing against the soft skin there.

Jack furrows his brow. This isn’t news. Of course Kent loves him; Kent is his best friend. It’s maybe the one thing he doesn’t need to be assured of right now, given the uncertainty of everything else. When Jack thinks about it, it’s almost annoying that Kent’s fierce friendship has never wavered no matter how steep the competition got between them; Kent is a greater man, and Jack a lesser one, a weaker one for being taken in by the jealousy that snakes through his heart when he’s alone with his thoughts. He doesn’t know why Kent is telling him this, unless he means it in some new way, in some greater, overgrown, terrifying way that Jack fears that he can’t reciprocate. He does his best to put the thought out of his mind.

“You always say that,” Jack says, because he does; he says it with his eyes in the morning, and with his body at night. He says it with a quick glance between passes, a nod in the communal showers, a head nestled against Jack’s shoulder on the ride home. Kent doesn’t need to put it into words, but he does, because Kent always gives Jack things that he hasn’t asked for, things that he doesn’t know how to hold onto, things that threaten to overbalance him and send him falling, falling, falling. 

Kent’s face has closed off, now. He releases Jack’s collar and fits himself back against the seat, staring out at the snow pelting down at them from the dark expanse above the sparsely-placed streetlights. His eyes are lit like lamps, and his jaw is set, angular and irritated. Jack furrows his brow, a sick sense of worry stirring in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, what he said to make Kent go still like this.

They’re friends, best friends, soulmates. Why does that need to be said aloud?

\--

Now, Kent is here again, in front of him, with those same lamplight eyes and that same right-angle jaw. This time, though, Jack knows what he’s done to cause it. He’s not sixteen anymore; he’s not as naive as he once was. He won’t let Kent guilt him into taking the bait, into kissing him until he’s agreeable, into letting Kent get the upper hand once again.

“Huh,” says Kent, and he looks stung. “Well, _shit._ Okay.”

Vaguely, Jack recognizes the look in Kent’s eyes. It’s the one that always preceded one of _those_ fights, and Jack wonders if that’s what’s coming now. He anticipates the gale force that Kent can seemingly muster out of thin air; he prepares his own defensive firestorm. These fights are the mark of the undeniably adolescent (again) and immature (still) parts of themselves; they are marked by wielding whatever they can to wound each other. Back then, those wounds had brought them back to each other, to heal together, to use each other for support. But, now, his instinct is to brace himself against Kent, to push him back, away, out of sight.

Out of mind.

“You know what, Zimmermann?” Kent starts in, advancing on him. _Here it comes._ “You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough?”

Jack cowers, a little. He shifts back, his thighs pressing uncomfortably against the lip of the desk. Kent is in his face, shouting, his mouth kiss-bitten and red and _mean._ “Everyone already knows what you are, but it’s people like me who still care,” he snarls, and Jack’s heartbeat quickens its pace.

“Shut up,” Jack says, quiet and timid, already shutting down in the face of Kent’s blustery anger. His words get lost between Kent’s biting barbs.

“You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless, right?” Kent yells, his cheeks flushed with ire. He smirks, and it’s _mean._ “Oh, don’t worry,” he sneers. “Just give it a few seasons, Jack. Trust me.”

Jack is shaking. He’s pulling in breaths like he’s drowning, laborious and shallow. He feels like he’s blacking out. “Get out of my room,” he manages, stammering and shaky.

“Fine,” says Kent, all fire. “Shut me out again.”

“And stay — stay away from my team,” Jack adds, pathetically.

Kent’s no longer boxing Jack in against the desk. He bends to scoop his hat up off the floor; as he straightens up, he sizes Jack up, head to toe.

“Why?” he asks coolly, but harboring hurt in his eyes, as though he’s the one that’s allowed to feel hurt right now. Jack knows to be wary of this, the calm before the storm. “Afraid I’ll tell them something?”

Jack blanches. “Leave, Parse,” he snaps, firm and final.

Kent glares at him, glowering, resentful. He doesn’t bother adjusting his rumpled collar or his shirtsleeves before gripping the knob and swinging the door wide open, hat in hand.

_Oh._

There, on the floor in front of them, is Bittle.

\--

Kent clears his throat at the sight of their eavesdropper, straightening himself up as much as he can. For once, he wants to be alone, out of sight, away from here. He brushes past Bittle, who’s still kneeling on the floor, some inconsequential pawn in Jack’s periphery as far as Kent’s concerned. He tugs his cap back over his cowlick.

“Hey,” he says to Jack, over his shoulder. “Well. Call me if you reconsider or whatever,” he says, the fight quickly leaving him, but his bitterness still simmering low. “But good luck with the Falconers.”

He turns to go, but lingers at the caution-taped banister. He has one last stone in his pocket, one last shot at shattering the windows of Jack’s glass house. “I’m sure that’ll make your dad proud,” he says, like a snake.

He’s halfway down the stairs by the time he hears Jack’s bedroom door slam shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is roughly 10k words of very heavy stuff and there's a lot going on and it took me three days to write so bear with me lol. i thought about breaking it up into two but i wanted to just be done with epikegster as soon as humanly possible, so i figured that y'all might also appreciate a one-and-done, lol
> 
> the perspective-switching stops halfway through mainly because i want kent to give his side of things in a convo to whiskey, so expect that context next time
> 
> there were some things i was going to put here re: references but i'll just add them in here later because i'm too tired to remember what they were lol. mostly it was just that i was pulling from a lot of different canon pieces to inform this but the only one i can remember is:
> 
> a relevant note from ngozi's blog post on parse III: Kent “Has Dreams About Jack Zimmermann, Which Are Bookmarks In A Detailed Catalog Of Ways To Make Jack Question His Self Worth” Parson


	26. E2: hurt/comfort

_ [1:27 am] can i come back now _

_ [1:27 am] please say yes _

_ [1:29 am] connor whisk: yessssssss deets deets deets _

_ [1:29 am] eta 34m _

\--

“How did it go?” Connor asks, cheerily, ready to be proved right, as soon as Kent walks in the door. When he sees Kent’s miserable face, though, his smile quickly falls away. “Dude, if it actually went good and this is like one of those bait-and-switch  _ American Idol _ reveals, I’ll freak out on you.”

Kent unbuttons his shirt and drops it on the floor by the bathroom. He sits on the bed, runs his hands through his hair, knocks his hat off onto the comforter behind him. When his face is safely covered, when his teary eyes are hidden behind his hands, he says, “No, man,” he says. “It — it didn’t go good.”

And then, all at once, he loses composure.

“It was going  _ okay _ and then — I was asking him about — teams — and — we fucking blew up at each other, just like we always fucking did anytime we talked about — I don’t know why I even bothered to—”

“Hey,” Connor says, softly, but a little shocked. “Hey, listen, come over here.”

“No,” Kent says, petulantly, embarrassed and hurt and so, so tired all at once. He covers his face with his hands and tucks his knees up to his chest as much as he can, heels resting on the bedframe.

Connor slides off his bed and crosses the short distance to Kent’s, sinking down onto the boxy hotel mattress beside him. “Then I’ll come to you,” he says. “Let me get my arm around you, stop—”

Kent doesn’t know what else to do besides lean in and let Connor hold onto him, rock him, speak soft and slow and quiet. 

“It was going so good,” Kent mumbles after a while. He almost doesn’t believe it, now; it feels like two different days, two decades apart, two lifetimes away. “I thought it was going okay.”

Connor’s chin rubs against Kent’s shoulder. “Yeah?”

Kent nods, miserably. “We were just — talking. We were looking at pictures and catching up and — I told him about living with you and he told me — you know, about his most recent ex, and it was — fine. And then — I don’t know. I don’t know why I thought talking about hockey would be an good fucking idea but — I guess I thought he’d be excited about signing this time around or something.”

“Right,” Connor says, appropriately practicing active listening.

“Anyway, he started getting all cagey like he always does, and—” Kent wipes his eyes, but there are only phantom tears now. “I kissed him, and — he kissed me back.”

“Oh, shit,” Connor says, surprised. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, and it was fucking magical until he told me he couldn’t fucking do it anymore—”

“Yikes,” Connor says, and Kent lets out a dry, humorless laugh.

“He was, like, trying to get me to quit asking him about shit, I guess, I don’t know, and I just — it felt like he was pushing me away all over again, you know? Like, all I could think about was how much he used to wall himself off like that, not tell me fucking anything, you know, and how it led to me getting fucking dropped, basically, and I just — I’ve never felt so desperate in my life, man, I just — I lost it, like, I know I shouldn’t have but I didn’t — I couldn’t see straight, man, I was so fucking mad—”

“I’m not gonna lie,” Connor says. “You’re scary when you’re mad. When you yelled at me about Hannah, like—”

“Thanks, asshole,” Kent says bitterly. “I really wanna hear about how fucking scary I am, you know, right now, in this moment.”

“I got you,” Connor says.

Kent groans and pitches forward to bury his face in his hands again. “I want to go to sleep,” he says, knowing that it will take a few drinks to get him there, “and I want to get the fuck out of this city the  _ second _ I wake up tomorrow.”

Connor nods. “I’ll figure out the car stuff,” he says. “You sleep, I’ll—”

“No, you too,” Kent corrects him, and then falters. “I mean — fuck. I just — you can do whatever you want. I just—”

Connor catches up quickly, thankfully. “I’ll text my concierge and make him do it,” he says, flatly. “You get in bed, I’ll pour you a drink.”

“God bless you,” says Kent, muffled through the shirt that he’s pulling over his head. “And — Connor, listen to me.”

Connor looks up from the mini fridge. “Huh?”

“Don’t kiss me tonight.”

It’s desperate, self-protective, pathetic, but Connor accepts it anyway. “You got it, boss,” he says.

Later, in the dark, Connor has his cheek pressed against Kent’s back, and Kent’s head is still spinning from the vodka. He can feel Connor’s breath slowing, evening out. Kent’s nearly there, too, less because of good bedtime habits and more because of complete and total emotional exhaustion, but he’s in the business of taking what he can get in every aspect of his life.

Before he closes his eyes, he decides to see what else he can get. He’s made some risky investments before, and this is no different.

_ [3:10 am] hey jack listen _

He starts to type  _ that didnt happen the way i wanted it to, _ but he backspaces that. He changes tack in favor of simplicity:  _ im sorry. _ He deletes that, too, because it doesn’t exactly guarantee authenticity in the way he needs it to. Finally, he settles on something, presses send, and lets sleep sedate him.

_ [3:12 am] i want things to be okay for hockey. but i want things to be okay for you more. i dont give a shit about me like this isnt about me. i wish i hadnt said that shit so go ahead and be mad at me. im mad at myself. but this cant be about our beef anymore like we have jobs to do as soon as you sign. what the fuck are we gonna do if we cant be in the same room lmfao. anyay im drunk goodnight. _

_ [3:15 am] jay z: You’re right _

_ [3:15 am] jay z: I need some time but will call soon _

_ [3:18 am] jay z: Have a safe flight _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a short one to balance out the 10k monstrosity from last time
> 
> i took a bit of a break from this fic for the holidays and to accommodate my all-consuming BTS obsession, but y'all know me, i can't go too long without writing thousands of words about shit i like, so you can now read my tailor shop BTS fic on my works page lol (i think it's fun to read even if you dont care about bts. i think it's fun and there's no prior knowledge necessary! just boys having fun and a dash of magical realism)
> 
> anyway, more soon (but christmas will slow me down again, lol)
> 
> (((also if you DON'T listen to BTS, what the fuck are you doing, go listen to BTS and then talk to me about them holy shit)))


	27. E3: flashbacks

[2007]

The Xanax fades him out. It makes his smiles come easier, stay longer. It makes his eyes linger on Kent’s face, on his hands, on his chest. It makes him better, more normal, more okay.

“I love you when you’re like this,” Kent says, and that streaks through Jack’s chest like a bullet.

“Oh,” Jack says. “You do?”

“Yeah,” says Kent, and he kisses him.

Jack never forgets his pills again.

\--

[2008]

Jack is standing alone in the locker room, zoning out, when Kent finds him.

“Hey, Zimms,” he says, cautiously, like he’s diffusing a bomb. “Do you wanna--”

“We lost,” says Jack, his mouth a thin line, hearing himself as though he were quiet and far away. He always feels like he’s looking down at himself from high above, observing, watching himself fuck up but not being able to intervene and fix it. He knows what he needs to do. So why can’t he do it? Why can’t he connect a goddamn pass? It’s not Timbits hockey anymore.

“In overtime,” Kent says, like that’s better. In some ways, it’s  _ worse. _ “It’s not like it was a blowout.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Jack says, accusatorially. He can tell that Kent is bristling with annoyance but is choosing not to show it. He wishes that Kent would yell at him instead. He crouches next to his bag, fumbles in the outside pocket for his pill bottle. He feels Kent wince at the too-familiar sound of the pills rattling, the lid popping off. He shakes two into his hand and swallows them dry.

“I want to take a shower and go to Tims,” Kent says, doing that thing that he always does, where he takes charge when Jack can’t bear to. When he gets like this, he doesn’t ask; he directs. It’s what Jack needs, because Jack can’t make himself move from the spot he’s glued to sometimes without it, but he still wishes that Kent would leave him alone right now. “Get in the shower with me, come on.”

Jack complies. He stands, wordlessly, and follows Kent to the communal showers. He strips without a trace of self-consciousness; he can’t muster embarrassment right now. Besides, it’s nothing that Kent hasn’t seen before. To his left, Kent strips too, and nudges their clothes into a pile by the door with his foot.

“Come here,” Kent says, turning on the hot water and testing it with his hand. “Come here, let me help you get warm.”

Again, Jack complies. He steps under the spray, and Kent comes close. He gets Jack’s hair wet, running his fingers through it, and Jack closes his eyes at the tingling sensation he always gets from touch like this. 

Kent always knows when he needs a distraction. 

\--

[2008]

Kent keens, and Jack chokes him harder. He gasps, and it’s the good kind of gasp. Jack wonders if his throat will bruise. Kent is so pale; he bruises so easily. He knows because, sometimes, when Kent is asleep beside him at night, he traces the blotchy spots on his skin, thinking through the hundreds of ways he could have gotten them. Kent’s never clumsy, but he is small, and the other boys are big. When they collide with Kent against the boards, it knocks the wind out of him, so it must bruise his sides up pretty badly.

“Jack,” Kent breathes, below him, and it snaps him back into the present. “Jack, please, hey--”

Jack complies with what he knows Kent wants. Kent  _ moans, _ and it sends electric shockwaves through Jack’s entire body. This is always overwhelming for him, like the way eye strain feels under bright fluorescent lights. It’s so much all at once, and Jack can’t see straight.

“You’re perfect,” Kent says, breathlessly.

The lights get too bright, and Jack’s vision whites out.

When he wakes up, he turns his head to the side, taking in the sight of the boy beside him. This is who Kent is, an ever-present rock, a boy he doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t know how to thank him for always being there, so he doesn’t.

\--

[2009]

“You help me so much,” Jack says, and means: thank you for helping me sleep.

\--

[2010]

It makes his stomach twist to think about it, now. It’s embarrassment, but it’s more than that; Jack is mortified that he was ever so detached. It makes him never want to look at Kent again. 

\--

[2013]

“You’re built into me,” Kent screams, and Jack hears it as a crackling soundbite over his voicemail.

His nerves are too fried for this. He presses the delete button.

\--

[2014]

_ Jack was fierce on the ice and temperamental in the locker room, moody and commanding and unpleasant. He saw the way that his coaches looked at him when he reacted badly to a loss. He knew it was bad. But he didn’t think about it, couldn’t think about it, before it happened. He remembers missing a penalty shot, blacking out, breaking his stick on the ice, and when he looked up, seeing a scout in the press box scribbling on his paper. It had made Jack want to die, right then and there. _

But he didn’t, despite the best efforts of the universe. He hadn’t. He had made another chance for himself; he had cut the line, as it sometimes felt. Now, though, he had to fix _this_ before it became all too real.

He finds Kent’s number in his contacts list and presses  _ Call. _

“You were always going to go first,” Jack says as soon as Kent picks up, and it feels mealy in his mouth as he says it, even now.

Kent sounds genuinely shocked. “No, I -- Jack, what?”

“I was in a rut, I was fucked up all the time, and you were  _ glowing,” _ says Jack. “You had my back, you kept us winning, you filled the space just like you always do. You  _ always _ do. You stepped up so we wouldn’t look bad, so I wouldn’t look bad. And I couldn’t handle it. I guess I was jealous, but it was also like -- you always did things without me asking.” 

He sits with that for a moment, unsure how to say what he’s trying to say. “You always took over when it got too much for me. Like, in the shower, and -- in bed, and -- in private and stuff. And I needed that, but I couldn’t -- I didn’t know how to -- but I didn’t expect you to do it with hockey. I was so glad you did, I couldn’t handle it if we lost games because of me, but -- I just didn’t see it coming. I knew -- I’m not saying that I didn’t think you could, I’m just saying -- when you were sailing past me in points, when you were focused and fast and healthy and I was falling back -- I didn’t know how to react to that. I feel like I never knew how to react to you, Kent.”

There’s silence, and then Kent makes a sound like he might say something, but he doesn’t, so Jack keeps going. He can’t handle the dead air.

“I could see it like it was right there in front of me. You were getting all this attention and I couldn’t -- I didn’t -- I knew you were going first. I could just tell.” He breathes, slow and steady, for a moment. “The fact that you went first had nothing to do with me. You didn’t steal it from me, Kent. I don’t think I ever had it.”

He hangs up.

He texts:  _ What I mean is, I’m sorry. _

Kent responds almost immediately. 

_ it's okay. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i've been gone for a while, i am completely absorbed by bts and it's hard for my brain to switch tracks
> 
> i originally was gonna spend a LOT of time on fighting/getting halfway there/taking two steps back/fighting again, etc. and then i realized that it must be as frustrating to read as it was to write, so i clipped it into a series of flashbacks that lets us see jack's process in making the decision to tell kent what he needs to tell him.
> 
> things are looking up!
> 
> miss y'all!


	28. epilogue

Love is complicated, and paths to happiness are even more so.

When we pluck a fig from the tree, the other figs blacken and fall to the ground at our feet.

We choose to pursue things at the expense of love. We choose to pursue love at the expense of things. We choose to love one person at the expense of other people. We choose the nature of our own gladness, and sweetness, and protection.

This is true to varying degrees, of course, because people are complex. Some people have fewer figs than others; some have bug-bitten figs, small figs, misshapen figs. Some, perhaps, struggle to grow figs at all.

But, no matter the state of our trees, we are always choosing. 

We are always, then, surrounded by blackened figs. 

And we are all always, always reaching up into the dense, lush leaves, wrapping a hand around our fate, and  _ choosing _ to pluck it off the branch.

When Kent chose Jack, when he was eighteen and bright-eyed and soul-scared, he chose an unripe fig on his sparse tree and watched in horror as it shriveled in his hands, threatening to blacken and fall to the grass below. But it didn’t. It held on, and Kent clutched it close to his heart for what he feared was too long. But it wasn’t; it was just long enough. Before his eyes, it found the sunlight that it had been lacking and bloomed anew like magic, swollen with the quiet love that Kent had fed it, dutifully and foolishly, every day of his life.

When Jack chose Kent, when he was twenty-seven and braver and warmer, he had spent years pruning his tree, one that was heavy with fruit and groaning under its strain. The figs were plenty, and plump, and inviting, but they were dense, so dense that the branches threatened to break. He pruned methodically; he pruned impulsively. He pruned to save the life of the tree, to allow the roots to spread, the trunk to twist and grapple upwards, the leaves to blush with green. As he made his way around the tree, he trod on blackened figs that had once looked so impossibly sweet. And then, when he was ready, he began to climb. When he finally reached the upper branches, strong and clear-minded from the toil of his ascent, he plucked the untouched fig from the very top, where no bugs could reach, where no bruise could form. He took the fig in his hands, turning it over, caressing it with his calloused thumb. He apologized for being so late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bear with me: for the sake of organization and readability, i'm gonna break this fic into two parts, this "pre-reconciliation" part and then "reconciliation/getting together". the second part will be posted as a sequel to this one. this "epilogue" foreshadows how the next part will go, particularly in that it implies a happy ending!! it might take me a while to get around to writing the second part but i love y'all <3 hope you're staying safe and healthy!


End file.
